The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (Histories of the American Frontier)

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The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 Histories of the American Frontier Eccles, W. J. University of New Mexico 082630706X 9780826307064 9780585161648 English Canada--History--To 1763 (New France) , Frontier and pioneer life--Canada. 1983 F1030.E312 1983eb 971.01 Canada--History--To 1763 (New France) , Frontier and pioneer life--Canada.

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The Canadian Frontier: 1534-1760 W. J. Eccles University of Toronto Histories of the American Frontier Ray Allen Billington, General Editor Howard R. Lamar, Coeditor

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Eccles, W. J. (William John) The Canadian Frontier, 15341760. (Histories of the American frontier) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. CanadaHistoryTo 1763 (New France). 2. Frontier and pioneer lifeCanada. I. Title II. Series. F1030.E312 1983 971.01 83-5753 ISBN 0-8263-0705-1 ISBN 0-8263-0706-X (pbk.) © 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 70-81783. Reprinted 1979 by the University of New Mexico Press. International Standard Book Number 0-8263-0311-0 Revised edition © 1983 by the University of New Mexico Press. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 83-5753. International Standard Book Number 0-8263-0705-1 (cloth). 0-8263-0706-X (paper). Seventh paperbound printing, revised edition, 1999

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Contents Foreword

vii

PrefaceRevised Edition

xi

Preface

xv

Glossary

xvii

Maps

xix

1. The Nature of the Canadian Frontier

1

2. New France, 15241629: A Commercial Outpost

12

3. Commerce and Evangelism, 16321662

35

4. Institutions and Environment

60

5. Society and the Frontier

83

6. The Fur Trade Frontier, 16631700

103

7. The Imperial Frontier, 17001750

132

8. The Military Frontier, 17481760

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9. Epilogue: The Closing of the Canadian Fur Trade Frontier

186

Notes

193

Bibliographical Notes

208

Bibliographical Notes1982 Update

221

Index

225

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Foreword The course of America's westward expansion during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was shaped not only by the natural obstacles that barred the path of advancing pioneers, not only by the Indian foes who disputed their progress, but by the titanic conflicts that were remaking the map of Europe during that day of emerging nationalism. Three powers were the principal contenders for the empire that could be carved from eastern North America: England, Spain, and France. By the accident of discovery no less than by design, each monopolized one segment as a base for operations against the others: Spain, the Southwest; England, the coastal lowlands from the Carolinas to New England; and France, the St. Lawrence River valley. Almost from the day these outposts were established each contending nation sought to extend its holdings into the territories of its rivals, using the three classic weapons in the arsenal of conquest: trade with the natives, diplomacy, and war. For nearly two centuries the conflict raged, ending only in 1763 when the last of the wars for empire ended with Britain victorious and its rivals ousted from eastern North America. In this struggle the principal antagonists were France and England, for Spanish power was already waning in America as in Europe. Their battleground spanned the continent, from Hudson Bay on the north to the Louisiana bayous on the south, from the Appalachian highlands on the east to the Shining Mountains on the west. Their shock troops were the merchants and traders who gambled their lives to barter for furs along these distant frontiers, for these venturesome wanderers were no less empire builders than were diplomats mapping the strategy of expansion in London and Paris, or the ill-fated Redcoats who marched with General Edward Braddock against the French at the Forks of the Ohio to touch off the French and Indian War. Clashes in these remote borderlands merged into four major conflicts and any number of minor skirmishes. In the retrospect of history the outcome was seldom in doubt, for New France extended its borders too

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far to be guarded by the small population that Old France could release to its colony. The wars ended with Britain in control of the eastern half of the continent, the French elbowed aside by the sheer force of numbers. Yet a century and a half was needed to prove that superioritya century and a half of conflict that rocked the western world. The story of this epic struggle has been often told. More than a century ago the brilliant Boston historian, Francis Parkman, began the preparation of the series of volumes that endowed the struggle with classic proportions: La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, Count Frontenac and New France Under Louis XIV, A Half Century of Conflict, and Montcalm and Wolfe. Others have followed, some with greater historical dexterity, none with comparable literary skill. Yet all of Parkman's successors have but slightly altered the story told by the master, and none has challenged the basic interpretation that he advanced to explain the outcome of the years of conflict. This long-accepted version is in this volume seriously disputed by Professor W. J. Eccles of the University of Toronto. Already widely known for his revisionist volumes on Frontenac: The Courtier Governor (1959) and Canada Under Louis XIV (1964), Professor Eccles has established himself as not only a leading modern student of French Canada, but as a trampler of legends and toppler of traditional beliefs. With the true historian's determination to test even the most widely accepted truths, with an instinct for ferreting out fresh evidence, with a bold lack of respect for time-tested "facts," he has successfully challenged established doctrine at a number of points in Canadian history. In this book he applies his questioning mind and fresh viewpoints to the entire French era in Canadian history. The result is a remarkable volume, and one certain to influence the course of scholarship for years to come. No ofttold tale is too sacred to be challenged, no individual too venerated to be pushed from his pedestal. Louis, Count de Frontenac, Francis Parkman's hero and the hero of Canadians for a generation, emerges as a self-seeking second-rater whose inept policies did more to injure than extend the French empire. The Marquis de Montcalm, long viewed as a military genius beyond compare, is revealed as a faulty tactician whose precipitous action doomed the cause of New France on the Plains of Abraham. Nor are other legendary figures treated with traditional respect. Pierre Esprit Radisson and the Sieur des Groseilliers are scarcely mentioned, while such previously acclaimed explorers as Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet are relegated to a minor role in the history of expansion. Even the famed Sieur de La Salle is painted as a minor figure whose exploits warrant only scant attention. Instead of glorifying the mighty, Professor Eccles shifts the spotlight to the merchants, whose search for status and profits (and status was more important than profits as an incentive) paved the way for the expansion of New France. His appraisal of the economic impact of the fur trade on colony and mother country is based on extensive use of hitherto unexploited sources

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on both sides of the Atlantic, while his vivid picture of the techniques of the trade is so grimly realistic that little is left for the reader's imagination. Professor Eccles similarly casts the Indians in a new and more important role. They were, he demonstrates, not mere pawns in the power struggle between France and England, to be manipulated at will by British or French agents, but a third party with a status and influence equaling that of the other two. Time and again he shows that Indian diplomacy was better conceived, and better executed, than that originating in Quebec, London, or Paris. The interpretative skills that Professor Eccles applies to his analysis of trade and diplomacy are demonstrated again when he describes the emergence of the frontier social order in French Canada. Here he grapples successfully with an unsolved problem: did immigrants from the distinctive culture of France respond to the New World environment as did the small farmers of the New England or Virginia back country of that day? His answers will both please and displease advocates of the theories of Frederick Jackson Turner. The seigneurs and habitants whose long, narrow farms fringed the St. Lawrence did develop some characteristics typical of Anglo-Americans subjected to the frontier's influence, he finds, but they failed to develop many others, while their institutions remained virtually unchanged. The searching nature of these inquiries suggests that this is a sophisticated book, and one that will appeal to the learned investigator no less than to the serious student seeking the most authoritative word on the beginnings of French Canada's frontier. Professor Eccles makes few concessions to romanticism or popularization. Those who wish Parkmanesque descriptions of wilderness battles, complete with well-defined heroes and villains, will be advised to look elsewhere. But those who wish to read analytical history at its best, those who appreciate the truth above fiction, those who want the latest word on the expansion of a significant section of North American society, will find on the pages that follow a memorable intellectual experience. They will also be rewarded with more accurate knowledge of a century of Canadian history than is available in any other volume now in print. This is one of the eighteen volumes in the Holt, Rinehart and Winston Histories of the American Frontier series. Like the others, it tells a complete story; it may also be read as part of the broader history of westward expansion told in connected form in these volumes. Each is written by an outstanding authority who brings to his task an intimate knowledge of the period he covers and a demonstrated skill in narration and interpretation. Each will provide the general reader with a sound but readable account of one phase of North America's frontiering past, and the specialized student with a documented narrative that is integrated into the broader story of the continent's growth.

RAY ALLEN BILLINGTON THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY APRIL 1969

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Preface: Revised Edition Fifteen years have elapsed since this book was written. A new edition has permitted the correction of errors, mercifully few, and, within very narrow limits, on some issues, a reinterpretation or change of emphasis. Of the errors that had to be corrected, perhaps the most significant concerned the termination of Colbert's Compagnie de l'Occident in 1674 and the subsequent leasing of its trading privileges to an association of tax farmers (page 105). As originally written, the new Company of the Farm paid the Crown 350,000 livres for the Canadian fur trade rights when, in fact, that trade was a minor item compared to the West Indies trading rights which were included in the lease. I am grateful to R. P. Lucien Campeau, S. J., for pointing this error, in a different context, out to me. Other detected errors that have been corrected consist of the statement (page 37) that the Company of New France paid no more than lip service to its commitments. The recently published works of Father Campeau and Marcel Trudel obliged me to revise my assertion to its exact opposite. Also on that page, a recent article by Marcel Trudel on Jean Nicolet's voyage west in 1638 compelled me to revise the statement that he had voyaged to Lake Michigan and Green Bay, and state instead that he had followed the north shore of Lake Superior. Research of my own carried out in recent years revealed that I was in error (page 146) in inferring that all voyageurs had notarized contracts with the fur traders who hired them for a voyage to the western posts. Many did, but it is clear that an unknown number had contracts sous seing privé, that is, not drawn up and registered by a notary, or perhaps only verbal agreements. Professor Gratien Allaire made the same discovery and published his findings in an article "Les engagements pour la traite des fourruresévaluation de la documentation," in Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, Vol. 34, No. 1 (1980). When writing the original edition in 1966 I estimated that the livre of the early eighteenth century had the buying power of roughly two Canadian dollars. That

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has had to be revised to ten 1982 Canadian dollars, whose value appears to be eroding far more swiftly than did the currency of old regime France. Research carried out in recent years obliged me to revise my views on Montcalm, Bigot, and relations between the French regulars, the troupes de terre, and the Canadians, both military and civilian, during the Seven Years' War. My opinion of Montcalm as both soldier and man sank greatly, as did my view of Wolfe as tactician. On the other hand Bigot now appears in a much better light, as having been greatly maligned. The reader is advised to consult the biographical articles on them in The Directory of Canadian Biography, Vols. III and IV, (Toronto, 1974 and 1979). Similarly I am now of the opinion that relations between the French regulars, who behaved in Canada as they were wont to do on enemy territory, and the Canadians were anything but good. The text has been revised accordingly. A complete reappraisal of the Seven Years' War in North America is now overdue. My own views on the crucial battle of Quebec in 1759 were briefly stated in "The Battle of Quebec: A Reappraisal," in Proceedings of the Third Meeting of the French Historical Society (Athens, Ga., 1978), pp. 7081. I would have liked to expand the brief comments (page 70) on the meagreness of emigration to New France compared to that of the English colonies, by accounting for changes in land tenure in France and England in the seventeenth century as described by Ralph Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies, (London, 1973), pp. 11922. Briefly in England the peasantry lost their titles to the land and became rack rented tenants or wage labourers. This change made for more efficient production and required far less labour than had the old small peasant holdings. This segment of the population, now surplus to economic requirements and pushed off the land, was thus available for export to the colonies. In England the very word peasant faded from the vocabulary, to be replaced by the terms landlord, farmer, and farm labourer. In France the trend in land ownership went the other way. The peasants retained title to their small plots and clung to their land tenaciously. Agriculture, therefore, remained relatively inefficient, and the peasantry overburdened with taxes; but there was no large surplus population to export overseasfamine and disease saw to that. Also, more should have been said about agriculture in New France to explain that the inefficiency in methods that the British and some Europeans remarked on was more apparent than real. In Britain and on the continent the amount of arable land was fixed; hence, an increase in production required more intensive agriculture. In New France there was far more land available than could be cultivated, but labour was scarce, so seemingly wasteful extensive agriculture was the method that had to be employed. Although the yield per acre was doubtless lower than in England or Holland, the yield per worker likely was not. A further factor was the lack of viable external markets for farm produce until the establishment of the fortress at Louisbourg with its large garrison. Once that came into existence, the Canadians increased their production of such produce as wheat, peas, and beans.

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One major revision that I would make today would be to enhance greatly the role played by the Indian nations. In the seventeenth century they were vital to the economy of New France; in the eighteenth century they played a political role far more important than I realized in 1966. Today I see them as sovereign, independent nations who tolerated the French on their territory merely because it suited their convenience. They astutely played the French off against the English in the thirteen colonies and against the Hudson's Bay company. The French were not really sovereign in the lands to which they claimed title in the west and in Acadia; the Indians were. All that the French held was a chain of garrisoned trading posts and their sovereignty extended no farther than a musket range from their palisaded forts. In fact, the French never sought to assert claims to sovereignty over the Indians, or make claims to the title to Indian lands. They were always ambivalent on the subject, saying nothing to the Indians, but making constant and sweeping claims to title and sovereignty to the English. When the English demanded that the French restrain their Indian allies from attacking the English frontier settlements, the French blandly replied that the Indians were not their subjects, therefore they had no authority over them. The land claims the French did make were always claims against the English, not against the Indians. With such a meagre population they, unlike the English, did not covet the Indians' lands, but they were determined to deny those lands to the English. Thus it was that the Indian nations, for the most part, supported the French in the eighteenth century wars but they did so purely to serve their own ends. They regarded the French as allies aiding them in their ongoing struggle to stop the Anglo-Americans from seizing their lands. But, after five years of continual campaigning, they had grown war weary and agreed to desert the French cause and made a separate peace, the Easton Treaty of 1758. This resulted in the French losing control of the Ohio valley and the Great Lakes. The Indians' tragedy was not to have foreseen the possibility of a major French defeat and the removal of French power from mainland North America. When the French capitulated at Montreal in 1760 the Indians were doomed. A good deal of research is currently being done on the roles of the Indian nations in the economics and politics of North America. When it is completed, the history of the colonial period will have to be rewritten.

W. J. ECCLES TORONTO JULY 1982

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Preface Canada under the French regime was a small colony, seemingly of little importance in the greater world of European civilization in an age of imperial expansion. Its population at its conquest by Great Britain in 1760 was only some seventy thousand, yet the French in North America for over half a century dominated the larger part of the continent, from the sub-Arctic wastes to the Gulf of Mexico. The frontier of this colony, for a variety of reasons, bore little resemblance to that of the English colonies. To a considerable extent the geography of the continent, the physical environment, accounted for this difference, but the marked disparity in social values and institutions was also an important factor. The Canadian frontier is deserving of study for itself, because it had many interesting aspects peculiar to it. It also serves, by way of contrast, to throw light in an oblique way on the frontier experience of the English colonies. These two European peoples, occupying adjacent areas, sharing much in common, in some respects reacted in the same way to their environment, but in others they reacted in markedly different ways. This book does not attempt to confirm or refute the Turner thesis. It seeks to define the term frontier in the Canadian context, to discover the motives of those who peopled it, to define what they brought to the frontier and what effects the frontier experience had on them collectively. It has been quite impossible, given the imposed limitations on length, to provide a general history of New France as background; many important aspects had to be ignored or dealt with summarily, but an attempt was made to include enough to keep the events on, and the influence of, the frontier in a meaningful context. If the reader approaches the subject totally ignorant of the history of Canada, he will be at a disadvantage, but I do not consider that I can be held accountable for that. A major problem is a dearth of source material on the early decades of

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the colony's history; for the subsequent periods the opposite holds true. In the period up to 1663 some significant questions cannot be answered; in the later years the great mass of material, and the increasing complexity of events, necessitate a careful selection of topics. For these reasons the study had to be confined to the Canadian frontier; the frontiers of Acadia and Louisiana were discussed only in so far as they affected Canada. Similarly, in the chapter dealing with the Seven Years' War, emphasis was placed on events in the west since they were more pertinent to the theme of the book, and, as the evidence revealed, this was one aspect of the war that seemed in need of reappraisal. It remains to thank the individuals and institutions without whose help this book could not have been written. Research grants afforded by the Canada Council, the Ewart Foundation of the University of Manitoba, and the British American Oil Fellowship Fund at the University of Toronto made it possible to pursue the necessary research at the various archives. The staffs at the Public Archives of Canada, the Archives du Québec, and the Archives du Séminaire de Québec, could not have been more helpful. To the Centre d'Études CanadienneFrançaises at McGill University, where I spent a most agreeable year as visiting professor and was afforded every assistance while writing the book, I am very grateful. In particular I must thank the director of the Centre, Professor Laurier L. LaPierre, Madame O. Colmagne-Civitello, and Madame L. Stam for the help they so cheerfully afforded me in the preparation of the manuscript. To my research assistant at McGill, Mr. Peter Moogk, my thanks are also due, particularly for certain of the maps. My colleague at the University of Toronto, Colonel C. P. Stacey, kindly read the chapters dealing with military affairs; it was most reassuring to have the benefit of his critical appraisal. To the general editor of the series, Ray Allen Billington, go my sincere thanks for his invaluable comments and constructive criticism.

W. J. ECCLES MONTREAL AND TORONTO APRIL 1969

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Glossary Certain terms used in the text have no exact English or modern equivalent. Rather than employ clumsy, contrived translations it was thought better to retain the original versions and provide a glossary. The names Canada and New France require definition. In the seventeenth century the two were used indiscriminately for the colony in the St. Lawrence Valley. By the end of the century New France was understood to comprise all French possessions in North AmericaCanada, Acadia, Louisiana, and the western posts. Pays d'en haut was the Canadians' descriptive name for the far west, meaning literally up country, or the country upriver from Montreal. The terms habitant, coureur de bois, voyageur, were peculiar to Canada. In legal documents habitant was used to signify a resident, but in common usage it meant anyone below seigneurial rank who held land in the colony. The Canadians were very conscious of the fact that their social and economic condition was above that of peasants in France, hence the term habitant was favored because it lacked any servile connotation. It is still used in rural Quebec today. In the seventeenth century the term coureur de bois meant anyone who voyaged into the wilderness to trade for furs. Until 1681 laws forbade the practice, hence the name had a pejorative sense, meaning virtually an outlaw. Early in the eighteenth century the term voyageur came into vogue. Essentially voyageurs were wageearning canoe men who transported trade goods and supplies to the western posts. In seventeenth-century France there were two types of nobles: the old aristocracy, claiming descent from the Franks, was referred to as the noblesse d'épée, nobility of the sword; and the new aristocracy, the noblesse de robe, deriving noble status from high judicial and administrative offices purchased from the crown, was known as nobility of the robe, signifying the long robe worn by members of the legal profession.

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There were three separate military organizations in New France. The milice, militia, comprising all able-bodied men between sixteen and sixty, was organized in companies and commanded by capitaines de milice selected by the governor general from among the habitants. The Troupes de la Marine were independent companies of regular troops raised in France to serve in the naval ports and the colonies. They came under the minister of marine, not the minister of war. During the Seven Years' War several regiments of regular troops were sent to Canada. They were known as Troupes de Terre because many of the regiments derived their names from French provinces, for example Régiment de Languedoc and Régiment de Guyenne. The old regime monetary system was based on the livre tournois. There were 12 sols in the livre, 20 deniers in the sol. The sterling exchange rate varied from two shillings in 1619 to one shilling in 1713 and ten pence in 1755. Down to 1717 Canadian currency was at a 25 percent discount in exchange with that of France. To find the value of the livre in today's currency is extremely difficult; too many factors have altered in conflicting ways. The closest approximation that I could make is that the livre had the buying power of approximately ten 1981 Canadian dollars. This estimate, despite strange anomalies, is based on prices of essential goods and services, wages and salaries, and the assumption that money has depreciated since the late seventeenth century to one-tenth of its former value. The livre as a measurement of weight was equal to approximately three-quarters of an English pound. The term arpent was both a linear and an area unit of measurement. Linearly, it equaled almost 200 English feet, and in area about five-sixths of an acre.

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Maps The Western Canadian Missionary and Fur Trade Frontier, 1640

41

Huronia in the Mid-seventeenth Century

47

Canada and Acadia, 1690

121

Acadia and Nova Scotia, 1713

140

Fur Trade Posts of La Mer de l'Ouest, 1750

144

Forts and Trading Posts in the Ohio and Illinois Country, 1754

161

The French Empire in North America, ca. 1750

169

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1 The Nature of the Canadian Frontier Before beginning a study of any frontier, the question has to be asked: frontier of what? In Canada under the French regime, as in the other European colonies in the Americas, the frontier can be defined as the outer limits of European civilization. It was a manifestation of the so-called expansion of Europe that began in the fifteenth century and continued for over four hundred years, until European civilization succeeded in dominating the worldthe first civilization to do so. Only in the past half century has the tide of this advance been turned. How far the retreat will go remains to be seen. This great wave of European expansion is frequently attributed to the new spirit of individualism released by the forces that accompanied the epoch known as the Renaissance. It may well be that the movement was an outgrowth of this spirit, but to be more specific one has to examine the motives of the Europeans who were willing to venture across uncharted oceans to conquer unknown lands against incalculable odds. Their motives were fourfold. The European had, first, an avid desire for recognition and fame, to distinguish himself among his fellows and achieve a higher social

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status, to acquire those intangible qualities that the French refer to as la gloire; second, an insatiable curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, to know what is on the other side of a mountain, around the next bend in a river, on the other planets; third, highly developed acquisitive and competitive instincts, a desire to acquire more of this world's goods than his neighbor, an inability to accept what he had, no matter how much, as enough; fourth, a marked intolerance in religious beliefs, the conviction that his particular branch of the Christian Church possessed the only true faith and that all peoples everywhere should be converted to it, that those who resisted thereby merited extermination, or, at best, a lifetime of servitude to further the aims of Christians. These attitudes were clearly defined by Samuel de Champlain, one of the more intrepid agents of European expansion, when he wrote in the preface to his journal, published in 1613: Among all the most useful and admirable arts, that of navigation has always seemed to me to hold the first place; for the more hazardous it is and the more attended by innumerable dangers and shipwrecks, so much the more is it esteemed and exalted above all others, being in no way suited to those who lack courage and resolution. Through this art we gain knowledge of different countries, regions and kingdoms; through it we attract and bring into our countries all kinds of riches; through it the idolatry of paganism is overthrown and Christianity proclaimed in all parts of the earth. 1 Such then, were the dominant motives that brought the French to North America to establish, first commercial bases, then missionary outposts, and eventually permanent settlements. In early Canada it is possible to distinguish four types of frontier: commercial, religious, settlement, and military. Yet they were all part of one frontier, and this one frontier embraced the entire area, not merely the outer fringes of the territory in North America controlled by France. Thus the Canadian frontier was markedly different, in nature and historical development, from that of the English colonies to the south. The frontier of these latter colonies, and of the republic that eventually developed out of them, was basically a settlement frontier that advanced steadily westward in a roughly distinguishable, if very irregular, line marked by cleared landa frontier constantly in contact and usually in conflict with the original inhabitants, the Indians. The Canadian frontier, on the other hand, consisted of a main base on a river that gave easy access to the heart of the continent, and several smaller bases, or outposts, far in the interior but dependent on the main base, which in turn was dependent on the mother country, France. The settlements of the main base, along a stretch of the St. Lawrence River between Quebec and Montreal, were a relatively narrow ribbon backing onto uninhabited virgin wilderness. Unlike the situation in the English colonies, the back areas of these settlements could be regarded


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as a frontier in only a very limited sense, but they were part of the much larger Canadian frontier. If the Anglo-American frontier is accepted as the norm, then Canada can hardly be said to have had a frontier at all. Rather, it can be said to have been a metropolis, dominating the hinterland around it, and with a few incipient metropolises beginning to develop in the west at such points as Detroit and Michilimackinac, and in the Illinois country. 2 When Louisiana was established at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it quickly became a metropolis in its own right, competing with Canada for control of the entire hinterland south of the Great Lakes. To the east, Acadia developed along somewhat different lines. It served, at one and the same time, as a border march in the defensive system of Canada, as a base for the French and Anglo-American fishing industries, as a French agricultural settlement, as a base for missionary and fur trade activities, and as a hinterland of the rival metropolises, Canada and New England. It was, in fact, an area of overlapping imperial systems. In 1713 the main settled region was ceded to England, and from then on the areas remaining to France served as little more than a buffer zone protecting the approaches to Canada. Geography dictated the pace and nature of European expansion in North America, and accounts in no small degree for the differences in the frontiers of the colonizing powers. When the continent is approached from Europe, there are only four main entryways into the interior: Hudson Bay and the St. Lawrence, Hudson, and Mississippi rivers. France gained control of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, England of Hudson Bay and the Hudson River. At Hudson Bay the English made no attempt to establish settlements or to move inland; they maintained only a few commercial posts, supplied from England, where they waited for the Indians to come to them to trade. Farther south, close behind the area settled by the English along the Atlantic seaboard, the rugged mass of the Appalachian mountain chain blocked river communications and easy access to the western interior. The only major gap in this barrier is the valley of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers leading to Lake Ontario, and by way of the Great Lakes to the western plains. This route was, however, effectively barred to the English by the confederacy of the five Iroquois nations, who formed the most powerful military force in the region until the eighteenth century. By the time the English were ready to expand to the southwest, the French had established themselves in their new colony of Louisiana, purposely to block them. In the English colonies the frontier was perforce the line of settlement created by axe and plow as settlers moved steadily westward away from the seaboard. In their wake the forest was cut down, the animal and human life it sustained killed or driven farther west. In some areas Anglo-American fur traders served as an advance guard of this destructive movement, but their numbers were relatively few. In short, the Anglo-American frontiersman


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Map by J.-B.-L. Franquelin, 1688, indicating the extent of French penetration into the west in the seventeenth century. Lac de Buade is today called Lake of the Woods. Lac des Assinibouels and Lac des Christinaux represent Lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Winnipegosis, drawn from reports of coureurs de bois and located some four hundred miles too far east. From this, and other evidence, it is clear that the French had reached the northwestern plains prior to 1688. (Public Archives of Canada)


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was a potential settler, the enemy and destroyer of the frontier forestland and its denizens. The development of the Canadian frontier and the relations of the Canadians to it were in marked contrast to this situation. The St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers and the Great Lakes gave the Canadians easy and direct access to the interior of the continent. The Canadians could travel with relative ease from their base in the St. Lawrence Valley all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, north to Hudson Bay, or due west to the Rocky Mountains. Throughout the lands along these water routes, supplies of food were easily obtained. Game and fish abounded; corn-raising Indian tribes were eager to exchange food and furs for European goods in the southern half of the continent; and on the northern plains the great buffalo herds provided adequate food. Along these waterways, there was no barrier to westward progress of the Canadians until the Rocky Mountains were reached. They reached the shadow, at least, of the cordillera before the Anglo-Americans had managed to struggle across the Alleghenies. Rivers by themselves, however, are not enough. A means of transportation is required; and here again the Canadians had a marked advantage over their Anglo-American and English rivals. The Indian's birchbark canoe was capable of carrying heavy loads, was light enough to be carried around river obstructions such as rapids by one or two men, and was manufactured entirely from materials readily available in the Canadian forest. The larger white birch trees that provided the essential sheets of bark for the outer shell of the canoe grew abundantly in the St. Lawrence Valley and the lands along the north shore of the Great Lakes, but to the south and north of this region the white birch of adequate size was scarce. The Iroquois and Anglo-Americans, when they could not obtain Canadian canoes, had to make do with canoes made of elm bark, or with dugouts, which were not nearly as serviceable. Similarly, the men at the Hudson's Bay Company posts were gravely handicapped by both the lack of canoes and skilled canoe men until well into the nineteenth century, when they devised a practical alternative, the York boat. 3 Although the French had the physical means to penetrate into the interior, they could do so only with the agreement of the Indian nations. As long as the Indians received benefits and saw no threat to their own interests, they allowed the French to establish trading posts, and even a few settlements, on their lands. But to the end of the French regime, these posts and settlements were tiny islands, with a handful of men, amid a much larger population of Indians, who regarded the land as theirs. In some areas the French had much better relations with the Indians than did the Anglo-Americans, but this was by no means universal. For the French, good relations with the Indians were absolutely essential for commercial, religious, and political reasons; for the Anglo-Americans, however, these motives were not so dominant. Frequently the interests of the English settlers and the Indians were in direct conflict. This was particularly true on the


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eastern frontier, as the population of New England expanded and encroached upon the Indians' hunting grounds. In the west, the greed of the Anglo-Americans for land did not constitute a serious threat to the more powerful Indian nations until near the end of the French regime. Ironically, French relations with the Indians were initially the same as were later to be those of the English. When, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the French attempted to establish settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley, the attitude of the resident Indian tribes changed rapidly from friendliness, to suspicion, to open hostility. This in no small measure contributed to the abandonment of the attempts by Jacques Cartier and Jean-François de la Rocque, sieur de Roberval, to found colonies in the St. Lawrence Valley in 1541. 4 By the beginning of the next century this relationship had changed radically for the better. In the intervening years the Iroquois tribes that had occupied the area between present-day Quebec and Montreal had departed, and no other sedentary tribes had settled in the vacant territory. It was, in fact, an unoccupied buffer zone between the Iroquois and Montagnais nations. Thus, when the French finally established their settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley, they did not have to dispossess the Indians. Moreover, the northern Algonkin nations welcomed the French, who were able to supply them with European weapons for use against their Iroquois foes to the south and the Sioux in the west. In exchange they gave furs, which had not been highly valued in Cartier's day, but which now enabled the French to realize substantial profits on the European market. By the early seventeenth century the French had established a close commercial alliance with the Algonkin nations and their allies, the Huron. This led, inevitably, to a military alliance, and the French were obliged to commit themselves to the active military support of their commercial partners against the Iroquois. These in turn obtained European weapons from first the Dutch then the English, who by this time were established along the Hudson River. What had begun in the distant past as intermittent war between Indian nations, armed with weapons of wood, bone, and stone, waged in a fashion more akin to blood sport than to war as Europeans knew it, rapidly developed into a struggle between the rival imperial systems of the European powers. In the beginning the French had been drawn into the struggle between Algonkin and Iroquois as auxiliary troops, but the roles were soon reversed and the Indian nations became mere pawns in the larger European power struggle. Yet always they sought to play the French and English off against each other, supporting the side that seemed best to serve their interests and only for as long as this condition obtained. Commerce was not the only motive the French had for maintaining good relations with the northern Indians. Religion was also an important factor. Within a few years of the establishment of a small commercial base at Quebec in 1608, French missionaries had begun their work far in the interior, among the Huron at Georgian Bay. These men, Recollets and Jesuits alike, had only one aim, to save the souls of the Indians by convert


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ing them to Christianity. To this end they lived among them, learned their languages, devoted themselves completely, and on occasion sacrificed their lives. Here was a unique type of frontier, a religious frontier of the mind, as these intellectuals, products of the highly civilized Baroque Age, heirs of Greece and Rome, medieval Christianity, the Renaissance, and the Catholic Reformation, struggled in a savage wilderness environment to impose their very sophisticated concepts and values on the North Americans of the Stone Age, who already had religious beliefs that sufficed very well for their needs. At first the missionaries sought to assimilate the Indians into French civilization, but failed. Too many of the Indians seemed to acquire only the worst traits of the French laymen they encountered; and conversely, too many of the French showed a marked aptitude for adopting Indian mores that were quite contrary to Christian teaching. The missionaries therefore strove to keep the Indians and French laymen apart in order to protect their charges from the debasing effects of too close contact with Europeans. 5 Yet missionary activity, commerce, and imperialism inevitably became closely intertwined, as all three depended upon the Indians to achieve their aims. Among the western tribes, wherever the missionaries established their chapels, French fur traders also had their trading posts. So that control might be exercised over both the Indian allies and the French traders, military commanders with garrison troops were appointed to the main posts in the 1680s.6 In this fashion French authority was extended over the interior of the continent. Policies were enunciated and orders issued by the king and the minister of marine at Versailles, sent to the governor general and the intendant at Quebec, and passed on by them to the officers commanding the western posts. The missionaries, too, were pressed into the service of the French crown, serving as liaison officers and intelligence agents, passing information back to Quebec and relaying orders to the post commanders.7 By these means the writ of the king of France ran for thousands of miles into the far reaches of the North American wilderness. But it could hardly be said that the French occupied the west. All they occupied west of the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers were trading and missionary posts, the closest being hundreds of miles away from the central colony. In between was virgin wilderness. By the eighteenth century a few of the posts, at Detroit and in the Illinois country, had developed to the point where some of the land was being settled to provide food for the men at the posts and the traders who traveled along the rivers to more distant tribes within the French fur trade empire. For the most part, however, the trading posts were a few log huts, perhaps surrounded by a stockade, with a small garden for growing vegetables, on a river bank near an Indian village. Although the men who traveled to these western posts and beyond, referred to as coureurs de bois in the seventeenth century and as voyageurs in the eighteenth, are legendary figures in Canadian history, we do not know much about them. A great deal of research needs to be done to


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discover who they were, the true role they played in the history of the period, the changes wrought on them by their way of life, and the changes they wrought on Canadian society. Many of them, perhaps most, were illiterate, and only a very few committed anything to paper that has survived. We know them mainly from the comments of their contemporaries, for the most part in the reports of royal officials and missionaries, who deplored their way of life yet found them indispensable at times. We know that in 1714 there were reputed to be at least two hundred of them who did nothing else during their entire active lives, 8 returning to the settlements in the central colony only when age and rheumatism, to which their way of life made them all too prone, rendered them incapable of paddling from sunrise to sunset and carrying backbreaking loads over an infinity of portages. How many others in the colony made the occasional trip to the west for adventure, to amass a few hundred livres, or just to get away from their wives for a while, we do not know. From the comments of contemporary observers, these men appear to have been a unique blend of French and Indian, wearing Indian dress, traveling like Indians, eating the same sort of food, speaking their languages, making war in the Indian manner, living off the land and enduring privation with the fortitude of the Indian. Many of them took Indian girls for wives, and, in the Indian fashion, changed them as fancy dictated; they gambled away their hard-earned profits as did the Indians and gloried in their physical prowess. In short, they embodied the antithesis of the middle-class virtues. What the Indians thought of them, we can only guess from negative evidence; most likely they accepted them as equals, for that they were. The missionaries, however, were aghast at their adoption alike of Indian virtues and vices, and some of the royal officials expressed alarm at the effect they had on colonial society. In the late seventeenth century a French officer in the Troupes de la Marine described them in these terms:

The Pedlers call'd Coureurs de Bois, export from hence every year several Canows full of Merchandise, which they dispose of among all the Savage Nations of the Continent, by way of exchange for BeaverSkins. Seven or eight days ago, I saw twenty-five or thirty of these Canows return with heavy Cargoes; each Canow was manag'd by two or three Men, and carry'd twenty hundred weight, i.e. forty packs of Beaver Skins, which are worth an hundred Crowns a piece. These Canows had been a year and eighteen Months out. You would be amaz'd if you saw how lewd these Pedlers are when they return; how they Feast and Game, and how prodigal they are, not only in their Cloaths but upon Women. Such of 'em as are married, have the wisdom to retire to their own Houses; but the Batchelors act just as our East-India-Men, and Pirates are wont to do; for they Lavish, Eat, Drink, and Play all away as long as the Goods hold out; and when these are gone, they e'en sell their Embroidery, their Lace, and their Cloaths. This done, they are forc'd to go upon a New Voyage for Subsistance.9


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The Canadian frontiersmen were an entirely different breed from the frontiersmen of the English colonies. They made no attempt to destroy the wilderness, because their way of life required its preservation. They were much more akin to the seamen of New England than to the Anglo-American frontier settlers. They voyaged in their frail vessels through the wilderness, carrying their goods to distant posts to exchange them for return cargoes of furs, just as New England seamen sailed to ports in Europe, Africa, and the West Indies, to exchange fish, rum, and timber for sugar, slaves, or manufactured goods. The New England men did not occupy the Atlantic, nor did the Canadians occupy the western wilderness; they merely established factories at remote points to collect the local produce and make it ready for the return journey to Montreal. In contrast to the English colonies where the frontier became ever more remote from the settled areas along the seaboard, Canada was part and parcel of an all-pervasive frontier, for all the houses in the colony had the river at their doorstep and along it came the men of the wilderness, French and Indian alike, bringing the values and customs of the wilderness into the homes. In the English colonies, as the frontier of settlement moved farther west, the restraints of civilized society weakened and the authority of the colonial governments became more difficult to maintain until it was almost nonexistent. Similarly, the absence of an educated clergy on this frontier did much to weaken the bonds of civilized behavior. 10 The frontier settlers, if they paid any heed to religion at all, depended on individual interpretation of the Bible, which in itself amounted to a rejection of authority. It was thus easy for them to reject all external authority. As long as they were able to control events, they needed to obey only the dictates of self-interest; but when they encountered hostile forces that they could not master, they immediately appealed for help to the colonial authorities. These authorities, remote from the dangers and problems of the frontier, frequently failed to respond, thereby creating hostility between the two sections. Again the Canadian experience was different. The Canadian frontiersmen, although frequently out of the colony, many of them for years at a time, did make trips back to the central colony. They always retained some ties with civilization, and while they were in the west, the officers at the main posts and the missionaries exercised some degree of restraining influence over them. Although many of the coureurs de bois paid little heed to authority most of the time, all were aware of how they were expected to conduct themselves. They might honor the king's edicts and the canons of the Church in the breach rather than in the observance, but if their conduct became too notorious they had to reckon on the possibility of one day being brought to account.11 Moreover, they were always a minority among the Indian nations and dependent on them to a large degree; in their own self-interest, they dared not behave in too offensive a manner. Any who did


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endangered not only themselves but other Canadians, perhaps the entire French position in a vast area. The Anglo-American frontier settler, by comparison, felt no such restraint in his relations with the Indians. To him, they were merely savages whom he despised, feared, and wished removed from the lands he coveted. 12 The Canadian needed the Indians to provide goods and services, they were commercial partners; but the AngloAmerican saw the Indian merely as an obstacle to progress to be exterminated as quickly as possible. On this point the nineteenth-century American historian Francis Parkman commented: ''The English borderers regarded the Indians less as men than as vicious and dangerous wild animals. In fact, the benevolent and philanthropic view of the American savage is for those who are beyond his reach: it has never yet been held by any whose wives and children have lived in danger of his scalping-knife."13 As with so much in Parkman's histories of New France, this was a half-truth. The Canadian attitude toward the Indian may not have been exactly "benevolent and philanthropic," but the Canadians had suffered heavily in their wars with the Iroquois, and they did manifest, in a variety of ways, considerable respect for these particular nations. The eighteenth-century Jesuit historian Father Charlevoix was closer to the truth when he wrote: "The British Americans . . . do not humour the Savages, because they see no need to do so. The French youth, on the contrary . . . get along well with the natives, whose esteem they easily win in war and whose friendship they always earn."14 Given this marked difference in frontier experience, what effect did the peculiarly Canadian conditions have on the central colony? In what ways did the Canadian frontier affect French culture and institutions in the settled communities? In studying this question one must begin with what the French brought with them from France, then note any departure from the culture and institutional practice of France. And here great care has to be exercised, for some quite radical changes were made by the French government in the institutions brought to Canada. This was particularly true in the administrative machinery and in the administration of justice. Reforms that the government could not make in France owing to the resistance of powerful vested interests were made in Canada. It would therefore be wrong to attribute these particular changes to Canadian conditions, that is, to the frontier environment. Little significant change occurred in the structure and working of the Church, only minor variations in methods to suit local conditions. In secular society, however, some marked changes occurred, setting the Canadian people apart as quite distinct from people of the same social class in France or in the English colonies. By the end of the seventeenth century a unique Canadian individual and a unique form of society had developed. To a large degree it was environment, the frontier experience, that brought this about.


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One aspect of this development was made very plain in the military field. When the long-drawn-out struggle between England and France for imperial supremacy began in 1689, the Canadians were more than able to hold their own against the English colonies. They proved to be vastly superior to the Anglo-Americans in forest warfare, and the Indian nations, for the most part, favored the French. The devastating raids on the English border settlements bear witness to this. The attempts of the English colonies to conquer Canada all ended in failure; several large-scale expeditions had to be abandoned before they made contact with the foe owing to poor organization and general ineptitude. Only part of Acadia, very weakly defended, was lost by the French in all this time. In the mid-eighteenth century, the rapid growth of population in the English colonies, doubling every generation, caused the pressure of their westward movement to increase immeasurably. As long as the French had to contend only with Anglo-American fur traders they could more than hold their own, but in the 1750s a new element was introduced into the struggle, that of Anglo-American land speculators covetous of the Indians' lands in the Ohio Valley. Moreover, this time they could count on the full support of British military might. Thus began the final conflict between the two types of frontier, the fur trade and military frontier of the French, and the advancing land settlement frontier of the Anglo-Americans. During the first three years after hostilities began in 1754, the French almost brought certain of the northern and central colonies to their knees; their governors were reduced to pleading with the imperial government to make peace at any price. 15 It was not the Anglo-American frontiersmen or the provincial troops that ultimately conquered Canada; rather, it was the frontiersmen who pleaded loudest for protection since they were bearing the brunt of the Canadian onslaught. Canada was finally conquered, after six long years of hostilities, by the Royal Navy and British regular soldiers. Although these troops initially suffered disastrous defeats, they eventually mastered the art of forest warfare. When the Indian allies of the French defected, the British were able to gain the upper hand in the west; and the tactical blunders of the French command enabled them to take Quebec. Once the French forts in the west and the colony's seaport were captured, the Canadian military and commercial empire collapsed. This made abundantly plain how tenuous French control of the interior had been. After the conquest, the British found themselves obliged to adopt the old western policy of the French. They now sought to bar the area west of the Alleghenies to settlement by the Anglo-American frontiersmen and to preserve the Indian fur trade frontier. But eventually the British were swept aside by the Americans and their new-found allies, the French. The frontier of settlement then surged forward and the old Canadian frontier was finally submerged.


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2 New France, 15241629: A Commercial Outpost The French were relative latecomers to the Americas. Hernando Cortes had conquered Mexico before Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine navigator financed by French and Italian bankers of Lyon, in 1524 sailed along and mapped the coast of North America from Florida to Maine. Ten years later, after Francisco Pizarro had conquered the Inca empire in Peru, the French again turned their attention to the New World. In 1534 the Breton sea captain Jacques Cartier made the first of his expeditions to North America. His fame rests on the fact that he was the first, not to discover the greatest entry of all into the interior of the continent, but to leave a detailed account that has survived of his voyages up the St. Lawrence. At the end of May 1534, Cartier's two ships were in the straits of Belle Isle, between Newfoundland and Labrador, seeking a passage to Cathay. Labrador itself appeared to hold nothing of value, and Cartier dismissed it with the comment that he thought it must be the land that God gave to Cain. Continuing south into the Gulf, he skirted the shore of the Gaspé Peninsula, where he encountered a group of natives who obviously had had dealings with Europeans before. They held up furs and by signs indicated


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that they wanted to barter. Cartier's men gave them a few knives and other ironware, and a red cap for their chiefobjects that delighted the natives. Farther along the coast, the impression that the native Canadians had previously encountered Europeans was confirmed. Cartier noted in his journal: This people may be called savage, for they are the sorriest folk there can be in the world, and the whole lot of them had not anything above the value of five sous, their canoes and fishing-nets excepted. . . . They made all the young women retire into the woods except two or three who remained. 1 Clearly, at this time the French considered furs to be of very little value; and the removal of the women to a safe distance indicates that the Indians knew what to guard against when dealing with European sailors. These particular Indians, members of the Iroquois nation that dominated the St. Lawrence Valley from Lake Ontario to Gaspé, were not wary enough. Cartier's men kidnapped two of the sons of their chief Donnacona and took them back to France. Cartier intended thereby to prove to the French authorities that he really had discovered new lands. He also expected, once these Indian youths had been taught to speak French, to gain invaluable knowledge of the country farther up the Gulf. As it was, who could tell what might lie beyond the most distant point their vision had penetrated? Asia might be reached by sailing only a little farther, or there might be lands like Mexico, inhabited by peoples rich in the things Europeans coveted mostgold, silver, copper, spices, precious stones. This possibility sufficed for the Admiral of France, Philippe Chabot, to commission Cartier to undertake a second voyage the following year, and for Francis I to invest 3000 livres in the enterprise. This time Cartier had three ships and 110 men. By August 13 his expedition had sailed beyond the westernmost point reached in the first voyage, past Anticosti Island. Donnacona's sons, whom he had brought back with him, explained that the kingdom of the Saguenay was a little farther on, and beyond that again, the town of Canada. Tacking back and forth across the Gulf, Cartier proceeded southwest until he reached the village of Stadacona, near the present site of Quebec. There Donnacona was delighted to regain his sons and receive the gifts the French broughtknives, exotic clothing, and trinkets. On the banks of the St. Charles, near its mouth and beneath the high steep cliff, Cartier established his base. After exploring the surrounding area in the heat of the late Canadian summer, Cartier made plans to continue up the river. But here he encountered difficulty; the natives of Stadacona were reluctant to allow him to proceed farther to the village called Hochelaga, where Montreal was later established. The French were to encounter opposition from the Indians for the same reason again and again during the next two centuries and more. The natives of Stadacona did not want those of Hochelaga to have the


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wondrous metal goods the French had brought, or if they were to have them, to receive them only through the medium of trade with the Iroquois of Stadacona. Commerce, with all its competitive devices, monopolies, forestalling, and profiteering, was by no means foreign to these men of the Stone Age. Despite the Indians' resort to sorcery and their warnings that to proceed farther west would lead to a land of snow and ice where the group would surely freeze to death, Cartier persisted and with thirty men reached the village of Hochelaga at the foot of the mountain, that he named Mont Royal. Hochelaga was a typical Iroquois village. Surrounded by vast corn fields cleared from the oak forest, it was enclosed by a three-tiered palisade of tree trunks thirty feet high, with galleries at intervals on which were piled stones to be used in repelling enemy attacks. Within the palisade were some fifty bark huts. The Indians were not in the least timorous, which is hardly surprising in view of their great superiority in numbers, and the hairy, oddly clad strangers must have appeared to be weaklings compared to themselves. Several times in the French account of the trip mention is made of the robustness of the Indians, who during lengthy marches carried the French on their backs when they grew tired. On the day of their arrival Cartier and his men climbed to the top of Mont Royal and there viewed the country in its autumn splendor for miles around. There were mountain chains in the distance to north and south, and the Indian guides indicated that farther up the river violent rapids barred the water route. They also indicated that up another great river flowing from the west was a land where the natives wore European clothing, lived in towns, and possessed great stores of metal similar to the silver of the captain's whistle chain and the copper of a sailor's knife handle. And so the map of the interior of North America began to unfold. The great rapids, later to be mockingly named "La Chine," removed all hope of voyaging directly by boat to Cathay. But the "kingdom of the Saguenay," which was partly the product of the Indian's imagination and partly of wishful interpretation, was most intriguing. Here was something to raise the hopes of any European, perhaps enough to impress the king of France and persuade him that his investment had not been wastedprovided that it was continued. The next day Cartier and his men returned down river and by October 11 were back at their base, named Ste. Croix. By this time the French and Donnacona's tribesmen had become very suspicious of each other. Cartier's men therefore built a moated fort, armed with cannon. They did not yet know it, but a far worse danger than the hostility of the natives was approaching. The site of their fort, present-day Quebec city, is approximately two degrees south of the latitude on which Paris lies. Cartier and his men had no way of knowing that there could be a great difference in the winter climate of the two places, particularly after the deceiving heat of the St. Lawrence


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Valley summer. From mid-November until mid-April the fort and the ships were buried under several feet of snow and ice, and sub-zero winds howled across the frozen river. As though that were not enough, the men were stricken with scurvy. By mid-February only ten of the crew of 110 were even moderately healthy. Twenty-five died and far more would have succumbed had not the Iroquois shown the French a remedy, the bark and needles of white cedar boiled in water. This herbal tonic, rich in ascorbic acid, quickly revived the men. It also indicated that the Indians had some valuable knowledge hitherto denied Europeans. Cartier, in true European fashion, began observing and interrogating them as best he could. He discovered that they believed in a God and life after death. When he somehow informed them that theirs was a false God, that a belief in the God of the French and the ceremony of baptism was necessary to attain heaven, the Iroquois asked that he baptize them. Cartier declared, quite erroneously, that he could not but he promised to administer the sacrament on a later occasion. He found the Indians' marriage customs deplorable, and that their system of communal holdings rather than private property had little to recommend it. The extent of their agricultural knowledge was quite impressive; they raised corn, melons, squash, and beans. They had no domestic animals except dogs, but wild game and fish provided them with an ample and seemingly well-balanced diet. That they were physically bigger and stronger than the French would seem to indicate that their diet was superior to that of Europeans. Much of their meat was eaten freshly killed, hence it would have retained its vitamin content. Only the surplus was smoked or dried to preserve it. Salt they did not use at all. One of their customs, the smoking of tobacco in pipes, proved to be too much for Cartier. He tried it and reported that his mouth seemed to be filled with flaming pepper. Once the river was free of ice, Cartier made ready to return to France to obtain fresh supplies before beginning the search for the kingdom of the Saguenay and its stores of wealth. His relations with Donnacona left much to be desired, and it was imperative that he retain the amity of the tribe that controlled the entryway to the west. Therefore, before sailing, and in connivance with a rival of Donnacona for leadership in the tribe, Cartier and his men treacherously took Donnacona and several of his companions prisoner. Then, promising to bring them back after a year's sojourn in France, he sailed down river with two of his ships on May 6. Despite Cartier's promises, none of these Iroquois were ever to return to their homeland. From the Indian viewpoint these Europeans began by stealing the people from their land, and were to end by stealing the continent from the people. Intriguing though the French Court found Cartier's account of his discoveries and what they implied, the troubled state of Europe in general and France in particular precluded another French venture in North Ameri


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ca for the time being. The Protestant Reformation was making gains everywhere, but the renewal of hostilities between Francis I and the emperor, Charles V, prevented both rulers from devoting their attention to the suppression of heresy in their lands. In 1583, however, a truce was called in the war and within a year Francis I was entertaining schemes for sending another expedition to unlock the riches of the kingdom of the Saguenay, which were badly needed to restore his exhausted war chest. This time he sent not merely an exploratory expedition, but one to establish a permanent colony in Canada to serve as a base for the conquest of the farther kingdom. To command this colonizing expedition, Francis selected a Protestant nobleman, Jean-François de la Rocque, sieur de Roberval. A soldier of some repute, a courtier, and a member of a powerful family, Roberval appeared to have the talents for an enterprise such as this, and Jacques Cartier, previously commissioned to command the expedition, now became Roberval's subordinate, his captain-general and master navigator. The king provided funds for 10 ships, 400 sailors, 300 soldiers, some skilled tradesmen, a few women, and all manner of livestock and supplies. By his commission, Roberval was empowered to grant land fiefs in seigneurial tenure; the prospect of such grants and of more portable riches was attractive to adventurous and penurious members of the lower nobility. It proved difficult, however, to recruit adequate numbers of artisans and laborers. Eventually, recourse was had to the royal prisons. Canada's first settlers appear to have consisted largely of gallows bait. In Spain there was considerable alarm when reports of the preparations being made at St. Malo were received. Spies were ordered to learn of the expedition's intended destination. Grave fears were entertained that the French intended an assault on the Spanish settlements in the New World. 2 In any event, Spain claimed the lands previously visited by Cartier. It was even feared that the great river of Canada might give the French access to attack the southern Spanish colonies from the rear, but this was not seriously entertained for long. To strengthen his own case with the Papacy, Francis I declared in strong phrases that one of his chief aims in claiming lands in America was to establish the Christian religion among the heathen. During Cartier's previous expeditions no attempt had been made to convert the Indians.3 Moreover, if the conversion of pagans to the Roman Catholic faith was a chief aim, it would appear odd that a Protestant should have been chosen as commander of the expedition and viceroy in the future French colony. In May 1541 Cartier sailed with five ships. Roberval was delayed by the failure of his artillery and supplies to arrive and did not get away until the following year. Not until August 23 did Cartier reach Stadacona. The Iroquois village was still there. Five years had elapsed since Cartier's departure with his ten kidnapped Iroquois, and he had promised to bring them back safe and sound in ten months. All but one of them, a child, had


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died in France. When asked, Cartier admitted that Donnacona, an old man, was dead, but he declared that the others were alive and well, great lords now who preferred to remain in France. Although the Iroquois professed to accept this explanation, Cartier decided not to re-establish his old base on the St. Charles. Instead, he proceeded a few miles up river to Cap Rouge, where a small river cut a cleft in the cliffs on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. The surrounding area was rich forest land, obviously capable of bearing good crops once cleared. But far more important, along the cliffs, veins of rich iron and traces of silver, gold, and precious stones that appeared to be diamonds abounded. Cartier then sent two ships back to France to report on these exciting finds. Spain, it seemed, would not be the only country to tap the riches of a Mexico or a Peru. Cartier soon discovered that the severity of the weather during the earlier expedition had not been a freak of nature; but scurvy was no problem this time. The Iroquois, however, were. Not without reason, they had come to distrust the French, and considering the sort of men in Cartier's band, it is quite likely that they gave the Iroquois good cause to wish themselves rid of the interlopers. At all events, the Indians harassed the French to such an extent that Cartier feared he and his men would be overwhelmed. In June they set sail for France. En route, they stopped at the harbor of St. John's in Newfoundland and there found, along with seventeen fishing vessels, Roberval with three tall ships. Cartier was ordered to return to Stadacona, but during the night, for reasons known only to himself, he and his ships stole out of the bay and set sail for Brittany. Despite Cartier's defection, Roberval went on to Cap Rouge. He lacked Cartier's hard-gained knowledge and experience, and fifty of the men died of scurvy. In the spring Roberval tried unsuccessfully to get past the Lachine Rapids. Although the accounts do not mention Iroquois hostility, Roberval decided that another winter was beyond his resources. By September he and his men were back in France. The first attempt to found a permanent French colony in the New World had failed miserably, and the kingdom of the Saguenay was as remote as ever. Worse still, the gold brought back by Cartier proved to be iron pyrites, the diamonds common quartz. The disappointment, combined with the turbulence of the wars of religion in France, put an end to the monarchy's interest in the new lands for the time being. Canada seemingly did not offer enough to warrant the great expense of colonizing expeditions. The land had been found to be fertile, but it produced only the same crops that would grow in Europe, and seemingly none of the exotic products of eastern and southern climes. No spices or dye woods had been found. The riches of the kingdom of the Saguenay, if they existed, were too remote, and the winters were enough to give any sensible man pause. Before the French would renew their attempts to claim and settle these regions, fresh inducements had to be found.


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Meanwhile, European fishermen voyaged in increasing numbers to the shores of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence during the summer months. Before the end of the century some five hundred ships a year fished in what are now Canadian waters, and the Basques of Spain had established a whale fishery at Tadoussac, where the Saguenay River cuts deeply through the Laurentian shield to join the St. Lawrence. By this time too, the shape of the new continent was becoming clear. The cartographers of Europe had the benefit of more direct observation, less need to rely on wishful thinking and imagination. The French had done much here. They had found the main route to the interior of the continent and charted it from the open sea for some 1500 miles. French names, not Spanish, English, or Portuguese, were given to the rivers and islands along this route. On the debit side, the French had alienated the Iroquois, who occupied the upper reaches of the river and dominated the neighboring tribes as far as the Gulf. There could be little hope that the French would successfully occupy the St. Lawrence Valley if this powerful nation opposed them; an army would have been needed for the task. But only by occupying the area from Stadacona to Hochelaga could any nation hope to push on into the interior, to the kingdom of the Saguenay or beyond to the western ocean and Cathay. Disappointed in the north, the French turned their attention southward, to the lands claimed by Portugal and Spain. In 1555, under the auspices of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot base for a colony was established at the mouth of the Rio de Janeiro. Five years later the Portuguese captured it. Next Coligny sought to establish a Protestant colony in Florida. It survived for three years, until in 1565 a Spanish expedition captured the French forts and put many of the would-be settlers to the sword. If the French were going to establish colonies in the New World, they would have to be well out of reach of the Spanish and Portuguese, which meant well to the north. In 1572 the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day plunged France once again into civil war. Until peace and stability were re-established in the kingdom, colonial enterprises were out of the question. Despite the anarchy of the fourth war of religion in France, French fishermen continued to garner wealth from the rich fishing grounds of the North Atlantic American coast. The cod of the Grand Banks was by this time one of the economic mainstays of northwestern France. As more ships engaged in the fishing, Normans and Bretons began to search for less crowded fishing grounds, pushing on into the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the days of Cartier, French fishermen had traded European goods with the Indians for furs, but they had put little stock in this commerce. The Indians were avid for European knives, axes, pots, and trinkets, but the French fishermen had at first shown scant interest in exploiting the potential of this trade.


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As each summer more and more Indians came to the coast with furs to exchange for European goods, the French seamen began to realize that profits to rival those obtained for fish could be made, and without the unpleasant labor of catching, drying, or salting the fish. Soon ships were going out from the northern ports of France for furs alone. Fur displaced fish as the economic motive for French penetration into the interior of the continent and was to remain the basis of the northern economy until the nineteenth century. The traders began pushing farther up the St. Lawrence, seeking out the Indians, striving to reach them before other ships arrived on the scene. It was no longer the lure of imagined stocks of bullion and jewels in mythical kingdoms that drew them on, but the tangible and rich profits of a readily available northern staple. As a staple, fur had distinct advantages over many other commodities. First, it fulfilled the prime prerequisite of staples derived from overseas: it could not be produced in the mother country. Furs were light in weight, of a high value relative to bulk, easily packaged, easy to transport, and, in the early years at least, highly profitable. Perhaps most important, their production did not require a large labor supply; the Indians trapped the animals, processed the furs, and transported them to points along the Gulf that ships from Europe could easily reach. No special skills were required to engage in the trade; all that was needed was a ship and crew to cross the Atlantic and a supply of trade goods that appealed to the Indians. Some knowledge of the Indians' language and their tribal customs became a distinct advantage as competition between rival European traders increased. There was no need to capture and enslave Indians to process the staple, as was the case in the Spanish colonies; no need to import Negro slaves, at great expense, as was the case in the Spanish, the Portuguese, and subsequently in the southern English colonies. The fur trade, from the beginning to the end, was based on an economic partnership between Europeans and Indians. Thus, once the fur trade became well established in the St. Lawrence Valley, the French, who quickly came to dominate it, had to establish good relations with the Indians. It was not, however, until the broadbrimmed beaver felt hat became fashionable in Europe in the latter part of the sixteenth century that the Canadian fur trade really came into its own. 4 The fur of the beaver was then by far the best material for the manufacture of hat felt. Each strand of the soft underfur on a beaver pelt has tiny barbs at the tip. When made into felt these barbs ensure that it will remain matted. As a result, beaver hats hold their shape better and wear longer than hats made of other materials. Beaver fur had been used for hat felt in the Middle Ages but by the late sixteenth century the animal was extinct in western Europe and only very limited supplies could be obtained from Scandinavia and Russia. Then Norman and Breton fishermen began to return from the North American fishing grounds with beaver pelts of excellent quality. The cold winters of the Canadian north caused the native animals to grow thick fur. Moreover,


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beaver pelts have two layers of fur, the soft, barbed underfur and long sleek outer guard hairs. The felting process required the removal of the outer hairs before the underfur was sheared off. The northern Indians fashioned beaver pelts into robes to wear and sleep in. The sweat and grease on their bodies and the smoke of their lodges made the pelts in these beaver robes soft and supple, and also loosened the guard hairs. Pelts so treated were easy to process in the making of felt, so they brought the highest prices in Europe. In the early days of the trade a knife, an axe, or a few cheap trinkets worth about a livre were all an Indian asked for a beaver robe that sold for over 200 livres in Paris. In one good trading season a man could make a small fortune. The market for beaver seemed limitless; beaver hats sold for over thirty livres and fashion decreed that all gentlemen wear them. With huge profits to be made in the fur trade, the number of ships coming out each year to engage in it grew rapidly. The Indians, every bit as astute as Europeans, soon lost their initial awe of the bearded, pale little men in strange clothes who had marvelous goods to offer in exchange for a few sweaty furs. As the word spread, more and more of them gathered to trade. Tadoussac, where the Saguenay River flows into the St. Lawrence from the far north and with a wide bay offering safe anchorage, had become the customary meeting place by the end of the sixteenth century. Over a thousand Algonkin, Etchimin, and Montagnais gathered there every summer. They quickly learned never to trade with the first ship that appeared, but to wait until several arrived and competed with one another, thus driving up the prices. It soon became obvious that the Europeans' end of the trade was being ruined. The number engaging in it had somehow to be reduced, and the only way seemed to be through an appeal to the crown for monopoly rights that would enable the recipient of the royal favor to exclude all others and stabilize prices at a profitable level. The king of France was quite willing to grant such a privilege, as it cost him nothing and could be made a vehicle for the extension of his territories and power overseas. But monopolies were no sooner granted than they were rescinded as those excluded brought pressure to have the charters canceled. Attempts by monopoly holders to establish colonies as year-round trading bases on Île de Sable in 1598 and at Tadoussac in 1600 ended in failure. It began to appear as though these northern lands were quite uninhabitable for Europeans and must remain merely a place where ships from France called to fish and trade furs during the summer months. Cruel experience seemed to prove that at the first snow flurries of autumn the land had to be relinquished to the Indians. In 1603 Pierre Du Gua, sieur de Monts, obtained the title of Vice-Admiral and Lieutenant General of New France, along with a ten-year commercial monopoly, on condition that he establish sixty settlers. Partly for climatic reasons, partly to escape the competition of traders who refused to respect the rights of a monopoly holder, he chose to establish his colony on


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Champlain Habitation, Port Royal, Acadia, 1605. Reconstructed on the original site. (Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, National and Historic Parks Branch, Ottawa)

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the Atlantic seaboard well south of the St. Lawrence. When his expedition sailed from Le Havre in 1604, Samuel de Champlain accompanied it as cartographer. Both de Monts and Champlain had previously spent a sum-mer at Tadoussac; Champlain had explored the St. Lawrence as far as Mont Royal, and its tributaries, the Saguenay and the Richelieu rivers. From the bases established in the Bay of Fundy, first at the mouth of the Ste. Croix River then across the Bay at Port Royal, Champlain now carefully charted the coast line as far south as Cape Cod. It is sometimes asserted that had he gone a little farther he would have discovered the river Henry Hudson was to explore in 1609 and that he would surely have grasped the significance of this river, which gave access to the interior. It would then have been likely that the French rather than the Dutch would have established trading posts and settlements there and the whole history of North America would have been different. This is possible, but more than that cannot be said. The French were interested only in the fur trade and the search for a northwest passage. Some of the French were interested also in conversion of the Indians to Christianity. The Hudson River would soon have been found not to be the desired passage to the western ocean; moreover the lands to the north were far better suited to the fur trade. With their limited resources a choice between the Hudson River region and the St. Lawrence would have had to be made. It is unlikely that the southern entry would have been chosen when the St. Lawrence seemed to offer so much more. As it was, de Monts' Acadian venture endured less than a decade. The amount of furs obtained from the Indians was insufficient to offset the costs of maintaining the settlement at Port Royal. Scurvy took a heavy toll and Cartier's remedy was no longer known. The religious quarrels of Europe accompanied the settlers, causing dissension among them. Merchants excluded from the North American trade by de Monts' charter paid it little heed. They continued to send out ships to barter with the Indians, and in 1607 they succeeded in having free trade restored. In 1611 the Society of Jesus stepped in to try to maintain the settlement in Acadia, thus making its entry into the North American missionary field. By this time, the French were not the only Europeans to have established bases on the Atlantic coast. English fishermen had attempted to establish fishing posts on the Kennebec River but had been driven out by the Abenaki Indians. In Virginia, after initial failure a settlement had been established in 1607. Its governor, Sir Thomas Dale, upon hearing of the French settlement to the north was of the opinion that the continent was not sufficiently large to contain both French and English, despite the hundreds of miles of virgin wilderness that separated them. In 1613 he commissioned Samuel Argall to destroy the French settlements. That England and France were then not at war meant nothing. Argall and his men overwhelmed a French outpost near Mount Desert island, killed a Jesuit priest, wounded


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several of the settlers, took most of them prisoners, and then razed the buildings. Port Royal was next. Everything there that could not be carried off was burned to the ground. All but some twenty men who were away at the time were taken to Virginia or England as prisoners. Those who had escaped managed to eke out an existence until aid eventually came from France, but little remained of the missionary outpost and commercial establishment except a tenuous claim to title on the land. This raid set the pattern for the future of the region. Although blessed with rich natural resources the Acadian marches, owing to their geographic position, were doomed to remain a buffer zone between the rival empires until one or the other prevailed. The French, in the early years of the seventeenth century, had returned to the St. Lawrence Valley in a fresh attempt to establish a commercial colony. What success they enjoyed they owed largely to the persistence and enterprise of one man, Samuel de Champlain. It was he who persuaded de Monts to try to recoup his Acadian losses by a trading venture far enough up the St. Lawrence to forestall the summer traders at Tadoussac. In July 1608 Champlain established his base at the narrows of Quebec, 130 miles upstream from Tadoussac. This marked the beginning of the westward movement in North America that was not to end until the Pacific was finally reached overland by Alexander Mackenzie, a Montreal fur trader, in 1793. The Iroquois who in Cartier's day had dominated this part of the continent had long since moved to the south, to the Mohawk River and the lands south of Lake Ontario. There was no one to dispute French occupancy, as the entire valley of the St. Lawrence lay vacant, but for the ensuing quarter century there was no real attempt to establish much more than a trading factory and a warehouse for storing furs and trade goodsthe furs to be shipped back to Europe and the trade goods transshipped for trade in the interior. No real attempt was made to settle the land. The merchants in France who provided the capital for the base would not invest a sou more than was absolutely necessary. All they wanted was a trading counter manned by salaried clerks. This bastion of France's infant commercial empire, situated on the narrow strand between the steep cliff and the St. Lawrence with its seventeen-foot tide, consisted of three connected barracks, eighteen feet by fifteen feet, a large storehouse, and a pigeon loft, all surrounded by a palisade with a cannon mounted at the corners and a fifteen-foot moat complete with drawbridge. In the early years fewer than twenty men wintered at the base and no attempt was made to raise more than a few vegetables and salad greens. Food supplies were brought from France, and a large part of the men's time was consumed in cutting supplies of firewood to last through the five months of cruel winter. Champlain made frequent trips back to France to plead for more aid,


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usually without success. When he returned to Quebec in the spring, more often than not he found that the men left behind to guard the base had done nothingthat they had made no improvements to the buildings or repairs, and had not planted any crops. In 1617 Champlain induced Louis Hébert, a one-time Paris apothecary of an adventurous disposition who had been at Port Royal for a time, to settle at Quebec. The company directors were induced to promise to support him and his family for two years and to pay him 200 crowns a year for three years. But when Hébert, having sold his assets, arrived at Honfleur to take ship for Canada, he was informed that he would be paid only 100 crowns and would have to serve the company as directed; only in his spare time would he be allowed to work his own land, and he had to sell any crops he raised to the company at current French prices. Hébert, having burned his bridges, had to accept, but with such treatment accorded an honest would-be colonist it is easy to see why no others followed him. Yet it is estimated that at this time upward of a thousand ships spent the summer on the Grand Banks, along the North Atlantic Coast, and in the St. Lawrence, fishing or trading for furs. 5 To forestall the competition of the summer traders at Tadoussac, it was essential that the men at Quebec establish a commercial alliance with the Algonkin and Huron middlemen. These tribes, located north of the Great Lakes, garnered furs from the northern and western tribes in exchange for French goods. This was the main reason for maintaining the year-round base at Quebec. As soon as the ice went out of the river, Champlain's men could go up the St. Lawrence to meet the western tribes coming down with their furs and make sure they went no further than Quebec. Champlain was quick to realize that the Huron were the key to commercial success.6 By establishing direct trade relations with the Huron, one middleman could be eliminated, an assured supply maintained, costs greatly reduced, and the rival traders undersold on the European fur markets. The maintenance of good relations with the northern trading nations required that the French master their languages, understand their mores and values, show them respect, and pay court to them assiduouslytreat them not as inferiors or subordinates but as commercial partners and social equals. The French were far more dependent on the Indians than the Indians were on them. Not only was there the gross disparity in numbersprior to 1630 the number of French in Canada was less than a hundred7but the colonists had to acquire all manner of specialized knowledge from the Indians, such as how to manufacture and use such essential things as snowshoes, toboggans, and canoes; in short, how to survive in the Canadian environment. Within a year of establishing his fort, Champlain discovered that more than diplomacy was required to maintain trading relations with the northern tribes. In the summer of 1609 a war party of some sixty Huron and Algonkin came to solicit French aid in an attack on their ancient foe, the Iroquois.


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Champlain had no choice but to comply. With two companions he accompanied them up the Richelieu River to the lake that came to bear his name. His account of what ensued provides a good glimpse of what war must have been like in that part of the world before the advent of Europeans. It resembled not so much war as then practiced in Europe but a form of savage blood sport that provided an opportunity for individuals to demonstrate their courage, fortitude, and skill. The skirmish between the sixty odd northern Indians, the three French-men, and some two hundred Mohawk was the first clash in a war between French and Iroquois that was to endure, off and on, for nearly a hundred years. For the Iroquois, it was their first encounter with firearms. The crude harquebuses of Champlain and his men suddenly belching flame, smoke, and thunder in the forest glade, three of the Iroquois falling mortally wounded, proved unnerving. The rest turned and fled. More were killed during the pursuit and ten or twelve taken prisoner. Champlain then had to witness another aspect of Indian warfare, one with which the French were to become all too familiar in the years ahead, the long-drawn-out, hideous torture of the captives. It is sometimes asserted that Champlain's role in this brief clash was the direct cause of the ensuing long struggle between the French and the Iroquois. Although his role on this occasion did nothing to endear him to the Iroquois, too much must not be made of it. The French had established themselves in the St. Lawrence Valley and were allied commercially with the northern tribes, enemies of the Iroquois. Within a few years the Dutch established themselves on the Hudson River and provided the Iroquois with European weapons. Once this occurred the lines were irrevocably drawn; the ancient war between the Algonkin and Iroquois now became a war between two European powers and two economic regions for dominance in North America. The only way this could have been avoided would have been for both the St. Lawrence and Hudson rivers to have been colonized by a single European power. Champlain was merely an agent of existing forces; he did not create them. For the first five years the returns from the fur trade were poor, barely enough to pay the costs of maintaining the base at Quebec with a staff of only seventeen or eighteen men. In an effort to persuade more of the northwestern tribesmen to bring their furs to Quebec, Champlain began the practice, much in vogue in North America today, of sending company field representatives to the Indian villages. Their first tasks were to learn the language of the Indians and as much as possible of their customs, the geography of their country, and to make maps of it for future use. In 1612 he sent Etienne Brulé to winter with the Huron. This young man demonstrated that the French could adapt themselves all too easily to the Indian way of life. During the ensuing quarter century he traveled through much


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of the interior of North America. He was finally killed and, according to the Recollet missionary, Sagard, eaten by the Indians, whose moral standards, indulgent though they were, he had succeeded in outraging. 8 He was the first Frenchman, but by no means the last, to be completely assimilated by the Indians. By 1614 the trade in furs was proving so profitable that a new company was formed in France to ensure better backing for Champlain at Quebec. He was now able to make plans for a more stable settlement, bringing peasants to provide food for the trading staff so that the men at the post would not be totally dependent on food supplies brought from France. The hopes of the French crown to undertake missionary work among the Indians which would cement their commercial ties with the French as well as save them from eternal hell-fire in the next world, could now be realized. When the bishops of France gathered in Paris for the Estates-General of 1614, they quickly approved Champlain's suggestion that four of the Recollet order of the Minor Friars be sent to Canada to begin the stupendous task. In June 1615, Fathers Denis Jamay, Jean Dolbeau, and Joseph Le Caron and lay brother Pacifique du Plessis arrived at Quebec, where Champlain had already put men to work building a house and chapel for them. So eager were they to begin their work that two of their number left that year for Tadoussac and Georgian Bay. This marked the beginning of the great missionary drive of the Counter Reformation French clergy to persuade the nomadic hunters of a vast continent to change their entire way of life, abandon their ancient customs, values, and religious beliefs, and live according to the precepts of a sophisticated European religion ill-adapted to their temperament and their needs. The efforts of these men of God, who sincerely believed that their ministrations were essential to save the Indians from an eternity of torment after death, to procure for them the bliss of a seventeenthcentury European's concept of heaven were to contribute unwittingly to the final destruction of the North American Indian. Before they could have converted the Indian without debasing him they would somehow have had to persuade Europeans to live according to the tenets of their own religion. During the first decade of this missionary endeavor it could not have appeared to the Indians that the Recollets posed any serious threat to their way of life. There were never more than four missionaries in New France at one time, and fewer than fifty Indians were baptized, most of them when they were at the point of death. In 1616 Father Le Caron returned to Quebec after spending one winter in Huronia. Not until 1623 did the Recollets go back to the Huron mission field, when Fathers Joseph Le Caron and Nicolas Viel and Brother Gabriel Sagard established a mission at the village of Quienonascaran. The following year Le Caron and Sagard returned to Quebec, leaving Father Viel to attempt the conversion of the Huron nation, estimated to number some 30,000 souls. The mere task of traveling to


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Huronia in the company of the Indians almost broke the spirit of the early missionaries. Sagard, with deep feeling born of experience, commented: In order to practise patience in good earnest and to endure hardships beyond the limit of human strength, it is only necessary to make journeys with the savages, and long ones especially, such as we did; because besides the danger of death on the way, one must make up one's mind to endure and suffer more than could be imagined, from hunger, from sleeping always on the bare ground in the open country, from walking with great labour in water and bogs, and in some places over rocks, and through dark thick woods, from rain on one's back and all the evils that the season and weather can inflict, and from being bitten by a countless swarm of mosquitoes, and midges, together with difficulties of language in explaining clearly and showing them one's needs, and having no Christian beside one for communication and consolation in the midst of one's toil. 9 Like most of the missionaries, Sagard found Indian food hard to stomach. Between Montreal and Huronia the Indians had supplies of corn cached at intervals of two-days travel. En route they existed on two meals a day of sagamité, corn ground between two stones and boiled into mush in a kettle; mixed in with it were any dirt and insects that happened to be on the stones. If fish or birds were caught, they were just thrown into a pot and boiled without being drawn; small animals had their fur seared off in the fire before they were tossed in. As the stew came to the boil, the feathery, furry scum was scooped off the top; then everyone dipped in. If a war party returning home with prisoners ran short of food, one of the captives was knocked on the head, quickly butchered, and boiled in the kettle. This technique of making one's food supply walk had distinct military advantages, but the French were appalled by the practice. And when an Indian, while paddling in a canoe, felt the need to urinate, he merely used the same birch bark bowl that served him to scoop his share of the sagamité out of the pot. Given that there were so few of them and that it required years to master the Indians' languages, it is no wonder that the Recollets enjoyed little success. It has to be noted, however, that they found it difficult to adjust to the strange environment. They were, in fact, ill suited to the task by training and by temperament; but if nothing else, they did make a beginning in establishing good relations with the Indians. This in no small measure aided the French fur traders, for whom the missionaries served as public relations officers. While the Recollets were establishing their mission in Huronia, Champlain was forced to accede to the demands of the Huron and Algonkin that he again provide them with military aid in their war with the Iroquois. The economic struggle between the rival commercial metropolises on the St. Lawrence and the Hudson rivers was now fully engaged. The Iroquois, provided with weapons by the recently established Dutch at Fort Orange,


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where Albany stands today, and paid high prices in trade goods for furs, were becoming increasingly bold, ambushing the northern tribes en route to trade at Quebec and pillaging them of their furs or goods. To maintain his commercial alliance, Champlain had to agree to his allies' demands. He also hoped, after the campaign, to continue on to discover the western ocean that the Indians spoke of with tantalizing vagueness. 10 With two French companions and ten Indians, he set off for Huronia in July 1615, traveling by way of the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers, Lake Nipissing, and French River. On the way they were met by a party of 300 Ottawa, naked and grotesquely tattooed, with elaborate coiffures, master canoe men and great traders, who were soon to become the chief partners of the French in the fur trade. On birch bark with a piece of charcoal, one of them drew a map for Champlain of his country to the west for future reference. Taking leave of the Ottawa at the mouth of the French River, Champlain and his companions paddled swiftly south, over thirty miles a day. On August 1 they reached Huronia, landing near present-day Penetanguishene. Here Champlain found himself in pleasant country, with rolling hills and meadows intersected by shallow rivers and streams, and towering hardwood forestsoak, elm, and maplewith here and there heavy growth of poplar and spruce where forest fires had burned off the hardwoods. Running crisscross through this land were well-worn trails connecting the many Huron villages, which contained some thirty to thirty-five thousand people. The villages, containing upward of two thousand people each, were for security reasons usually built on a hill and surrounded by as many as three palisades some twenty-five feet high. Galleries provided a place for bowmen to fire on attackers and for boulders and boiling water to be dropped on an enemy attempting to hack through the palisades. Inside were the long houses, some eighty feet by thirty feet, shaped like latter-day Quonset huts, the framework of supple branches lashed together with twisted strands of elm bark and the whole covered with sheets of elm or birch bark. Within the huts two racks extended along each side, one some three or four feet off the ground, the other a few feet above it, like double-deck bunks. Covered with fur robes, these were the sleeping quarters; children above, their elders below. Each long house held several families. Down the center were fires for warmth and cooking; two families usually shared a fire. Some of the smoke from these fires found its way out through the covered doorways at each end; most of it remained in the hut keeping mosquitoes at bay but frequently causing serious eye problems for the occupants, sometimes resulting in blindness later in life. There was no privacy in the long house, and property rights were almost nonexistent. Scattered among the long houses were smaller sod and bark structures, smoke houses for meat, drying racks for fish, a sweat house used in the treatment of certain ailments. Here and there elevated racks held the bodies


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of the recently departed, awaiting the great feast of the dead for final interment. All around the long houses, paving the area between them, were garbage, bones, and offal, which were tossed casually to the half-wild dogs who swarmed about. The filth and stench, the swarms of biting insects, winged and crawling, were almost more than the more gently nurtured of the seventeenth-century French could stomach; but for those from the lower elements of European society it could not have been much worse than what they had known in the crowded sections of Europe's cities. Surrounding the village were the stump-ridden fields where the squaws cultivated the indigenous corn, squash, and beans, and the peas recently acquired from the French. Despite primitive methods the yield was adequate, and, unlike the Montagnais, the Huron were singularly provident, storing enough food for months or even years ahead. They appear to have eaten little meat; fish and vegetables were their staple foods. This was probably because, with such a large population in the area, little game remained. Yet that their food supply was sufficient and their diet adequate, is attested to by their hardihood. Champlain spent a month in Huron villages such as these while his commercial allies, in what seemed to him desultory fashion, gathered their forces for an invasion of the Iroquois country. Not until September 1, after nights of feasting and dancing, was the war party, made up of some five hundred warriors, ready to depart. With him, Champlain took twelve French engagés who had accompanied Father Le Caron to build and maintain the Recollet mission post. By way of Lake Simcoe, the Kawartha Lakes, and the Otonabee and Trent river systems, they reached Lake Ontario, crossed it at the eastern narrows, and landed on what is today American soil. By October 10 they had reached their objective, the fortified village of the Onondaga. From the moment they arrived, the plans of the attackers miscarried. The Iroquois village had fortifications far stronger than those of Huron villages, and the firearms of the French had little effect on the stout log palisade. After a futile, disorganized assault, during which the Hurons suffered several casualties and Champlain was twice wounded, the attacking force beat a rapid retreat to Huronia. 11 This minor battle was to have considerable significance. It marks a turning point in Iroquois history. When Jacques Cartier first sailed up the St. Lawrence, the Iroquois had dominated that water route to the sea. By the time Champlain reached Quebec, they had been driven back and confined to the area south of the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, west of the Hudson, and east of the Niagara River. On all sides they were beleaguered, by enemy tribes, to the east were the Mohegan, to the south the Andastes, to the north the Huron and Algonkin tribes. Only to the west where lay the lands of the Neutral were they relatively secure; and now the French had begun moving southwestward from Quebec up the St. Lawrence to its junction with the Ottawa, to trade with the foes of the Iroquois, providing


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them with ample supplies of iron weapons. The Iroquois had retreated as far as they could go; they now had to stand or die. In 1687, at the onset of fresh hostilities with the French, the Mohawk chiefs were to declare, ''we intend to stay here and to live here and die here, for where can we run?" 12 They probably said the same prior to the abortive assault by Champlain and the Huron on the Onondaga village. Afterward things must have looked different. The French with their firearms had been shown not to be invincible. Their prestige declined accordingly. The invading army had been beaten back and was not likely to return. If the Iroquois were to obtain supplies of firearms, they could retaliate, perhaps regain the lands they had lost. With the Dutch on the Hudson River willing to give almost anything to trade for furs, arms could be had. After 1615 the Iroquois took the offensive. To the end of the century, the French found themselves engaged in a desperate struggle to defend their fur trade empire against the assaults of the Iroquois, who were seeking to divert the trade from Montreal to Albany, ultimately from Paris to London, thereby making themselves the dominant power in the region. In 1623 word came to Quebec of developments in the west that were to become all too familiar throughout the ensuing history of New France. That summer a delegation of western Indians came to Quebec to trade and complained that the Huron and some Algonkin had held them up en route, seeking to prevent them from going to trade at Quebec and robbing them of much of their cargo. The Huron and their Algonkin associates were determined to maintain their profitable middlemen role. The following summer a delegation of Iroquois came to trade and to make peace with their Huron and Algonkin foes. Champlain agreed to act as mediary, but when the company directors in France learned of this development they were quick to see the danger. Peace between the Huron, the Algonkin, the French, and the Iroquois might enable the latter to divert the western fur trade to the Dutch. This would have destroyed the French commercial base on the St. Lawrence and ended all hope of a French colony in that part of the world. Even at this early date the relationship of the Iroquois to the French was a paradoxical one. Their enmity threatened the survival of the French fur trade empire by either severing its communications with the western tribes or by destroying the base at Quebec in an open assault. Yet their friendship was equally dangerous, for were they to make a firm peace with the western tribes that traded with the French, they might grant these tribes access to the Dutch trading post on the Hudson or serve as middlemen for them. French control of the trade of the interior of North America was dependent on the Iroquois to serve as a barrier between the western tribes and the traders of whatever nationality on the Hudson. But the French really had little cause for concern on this score. The Huron, whose lands were now stripped of beaver and who would not allow the western tribes to trade with the French directly, were no more willing to allow the


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Iroquois to interpose themselves as middlemen. Moreover, the Iroquois, whose own territories were rapidly becoming denuded of fur-bearing animals, either had to seize new trapping grounds from other tribes or force those tribes to trade furs to them for European goods obtained from the traders on the Hudson or at Quebec. Economic factors alone made the Iroquois enemies of the Huron and northern Algonkin tribes. In 1625 the French base at Quebec was made somewhat more secure when five Jesuits arrived at the solicitation of the Recollets to aid in the missionary field. 13 These members of the powerful Society of Jesus, men of heroic character, highly trained and disciplined, were to have much greater success in Christianizing the Indians than had the Recollets. Moreover, they were to be of inestimable value in the extension of French power in North America. Willing to endure incredible hardship, even torture and slow death, to achieve their ends, they quickly came to have great influence in the councils of the Indian nations. Although primarily servants of their God and the Roman Church, they were also loyal subjects of the French king, for it was only by furthering the secular aims of the crown that they could maintain their missionary posts. When they first arrived, the French at Quebec still numbered less than seventy. The land had not been touched by a plow; only small patches of ground had been cleared. In all, not more than fifteen acres were under cultivation. The chartered company persisted in putting obstacles in the path of settlement. Brother Gabriel Sagard wrote: . . . the country is almost uninhabited and uncultivated, and this through the negligence and lack of interest of the merchants who hitherto have been satisfied to get furs and profit out of it without having been willing to make any outlay for cultivation, settlement, or progress of the country. This is the reason they have done little more for it than at the first day, for fear they say, lest the Spaniards should turn them out if they had made it a more valuable land. But this is a very feeble excuse, by no means admissible by persons of sense and experience, who know very well that establishments could be made and fortified, if there was any willingness to incur the necessary expense, so that they could not be driven out of them by any enemy. But if they will do nothing more than in the past Antarctic [sic] France will always be a name of fancy, and ourselves an imaginary possession in other's hands.14 Eventually reports of the bleak state of affairs reached the Cardinal-minister Richelieu. The result was swift action. By April 1627 a new vehicle for colonization had been formed by the energetic cardinal, the Company of New France. This new company, with over one hundred shareholders each subscribing 3000 livres, was composed of men and women who, for the most part, were moved more by religious and patriotic motives than by the hope


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of enrichment, although the twelve titles of nobility granted by the king for distribution among the shareholders were also powerful incentives to invest in the enterprise. The company was given the title to all lands claimed by France, from Newfoundland to Lake Huron, with the usual monopoly on trade and the obligation to establish settlers in the colony, at least two hundred a year and a total of 4000 by 1643. To end the continual religious squabbling, Richelieu wisely ordered that only Roman Catholics could settle in New France. At long last it appeared that the French foothold in North America was to be firmly established and expanded sufficiently to ward off the ever-present threat of its destruction by the Dutch or English. It would, however, have been far better had the founding of this ambitious undertaking been delayed a year or two, for England and France were on the verge of war. While the company's ships at Dieppe were being loaded with colonists, provisions, building materials, and livestock, in England the government was issuing letters of marque to privateers. One recipient was Jarvis Kirke, a long-time resident of Dieppe and now a merchant of London, who had good knowledge of the trading possibilities in the St. Lawrence area. With the financial support of other London merchants, he outfitted three ships manned by two hundred men and sailed in March 1628, a few weeks before the ships of the Company of New France left Dieppe. With this time advantage Kirke reached the St. Lawrence first, captured the French ships he encountered en route and the trading post at Tadoussac. He then sent his brother David Kirke up river to Quebec, where he presented a demand for its surrender, couched in quite polite terms, to Champlain who as politely rejected it. David Kirke, confident of intercepting the French supply ships, forbore launching an assault. He assured Champlain that he would return in good time to allow him to reconsider. This was no idle threat; a few weeks later the French supply ships were captured in the Gulf after they had suffered two casualties and used up their ammunition. Eleven ships and 600 prisoners were taken, the latter being sent back to France. The Kirkes then returned to England, confident that they could seize the post at Quebec the following year before the French were likely to take effective measures for its defense. Meanwhile, Acadia, too, had been assaulted by the British. After the destruction of Port Royal by Argall in 1613, de Monts' lieutenant, Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt de Saint-Just and his son Charles had re-established the base. For a few years they derived a profitable trade both there and at a fort on the St. John River, but little was done to increase settlement. As the trade in furs declined, the base was allowed to fall into desuetude, this at a time when to the south the English and Dutch settlements were steadily growing. At this juncture of events a Scot, Sir William Alexander, remarking that a New France, a New England, and a New


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Amsterdam had been established in North America, decided it was time a New Scotland was founded. He obtained from the English king a grant of the lands stretching from the Ste. Croix to the St. Lawrence. Using the Ulster plantation as a model, where baronetcies had been established by English-men of means, he offered titles in his grant for a sizable fee. In 1627 four ships with seventy colonists seized Port Royal and the following year Alexander and the Kirke brothers joined forces to form the Scottish and English Company to exploit the trade in Acadia and the St. Lawrence Valley. This Company, like the French companies that had preceded it, was interested not so much in colonization as in the quick profits of the fur trade and fisheries. In the spring of 1629 the Anglo-Scottish company sent ships to both Port Royal and Quebec, while a French relief expedition waited too long in port for a naval escort. For want of supplies, Champlain had sent as many of his men as he could spare to winter in the Indian villages. The little plots of land cultivated by the apothecary Hébert and by the Recollets and the Jesuits produced enough to feed only a few of the residents. By the time the Kirkes arrived in three ships with two hundred men the handful of French who remained at Quebec had been reduced to grubbing for roots and the charity of the Indians to avert starvation. Champlain had no choice but to capitulate. At the time of the capitulation the French had been laboring for some three decades to establish a commercial colony in North America. They had very little to show for it. Yet it is difficult to see how, at that juncture of events, they could have done more. With French energies fully occupied by the Thirty Years' War, it is a wonder that Richelieu had paid any attention at all to New France. Certainly the crown could spare neither men nor capital for colonizing ventures. The task had perforce to be left to private enterprise, and French capitalists were interested only in obtaining the maximum profit with the minimum investment. They could not be expected to provide troops for the colony's defense or to invest large sums for settlement, even if competent settlers could have been induced to take up land in the wilderness, where it took a year's hard labor to clear an acre or two for seeding. These companies were formed for commerce, not to establish basic industries, and the only viable commercial enterprise in Canada was the fur trade. All that was needed for this trade was a warehouse, a plentiful supply of trade goods, and the maintenance of communications between France and Quebec on the one hand, the trading post and the western Indians on the other. For this purpose there was no need for large numbers of French to be stationed at Quebec; in fact, the fewer there were the lower the costs and the higher the profits. The private companies were not rigorously opposed to settlement as such, only to its interference with trade or to any attempts to make them subsidize it.


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3 Commerce and Evangelism, 16321662 When Champlain arrived back in Europe, he discovered that an agreement to end hostilities had been signed by the rulers of England and France the previous April 29, 1629, nearly three months before his capitulation at Quebec. After much haggling, France regained title to its lands in North America by the terms of the Treaty of St.-Germainen-Laye. On July 13 Thomas Kirke handed over the fort at Quebec to Emery de Caen, but not before he had garnered the spring trade in prime winter pelts. Nor did he leave much else. Some of the buildings had burned to the ground, and from the others the English stripped the furniture, the doors, even the window frames. The French had to begin over again, almost from scratch. Meanwhile, the Company of New France was reorganized. Enough capital was found to maintain the Quebec base for a few years; efforts were made to recruit settlers; and Champlain was commissioned Lieutenant of New France by both the crown and the company. On May 23, 1633, he arrived at Quebec with three ships loaded with supplies, workmen, a few soldiers, even some women and children. Three Jesuits had returned the


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preceding year; they set to work building a chapel and making plans to re-establish the mission in the Huron country. In May, eighteen Montagnais canoes came to trade. The following month several Algonkin and Nipissing arrived. This was a promising beginning, no more. Then, at the end of July, a great flotilla, 500 Huron in 150 canoes, came down from the west loaded with prime furs. In January a member of the Company in France reported cheerfully, "The ships from New France arrived on 21 December at La Rochelle. They were richly laden, the Indian allies of the French having this year brought down an extraordinary quantity of furs. That colony is in a very fine state." 1 The success of the commercial colony appeared to be assured, at least temporarily. As long as the furs reached the company's warehouses, all seemed to be well. Yet this tiny French colony in the interior of North America, containing few more than a hundred people, rested on shaky foundations. It served only two purposes, the trade in furs and the garnering of heathen souls for the Church of Rome. Both these activities were completely dependent on the Indians, hence both inevitably drew the French farther into the wilder-ness, thereby weakening the main base at Quebec. Recent events had demonstrated the need to strengthen this base, for when it was lost, fur trade, missionary work, everything was lost. As the French were soon to discover, the external threats to their incipient colony were greater than ever. The Dutch were now well established on the Hudson River. At Fort Orange the Iroquois could obtain European goods, including firearms. In 1626 they had traded over 8000 beaver and other furs; it is estimated that by 1633 they were bringing nearly 30,000 pelts a year to the Dutch.2 This exhausted the supply of fur in Iroquois territory. The attempts of the Iroquois to obtain furs through trade from the Huron and Algonkin tribes came to naught. There was, then, no alternative, now that they were dependent on European manufactured goods to maintain their recently improved standard of living, but to wage war to divert the flow of north-western furs from the French at Quebec to the Dutch on the Hudson, with themselves reaping the middleman's profit. As early as 1633 they attacked a party of Champlain's men on the St. Lawrence above Quebec, killing two and wounding four others. For the next sixty years and more the French were to have little respite from the attacks of this relentless foe. In 1634 a fort was built at Trois-Rivières, at the mouth of the St. Maurice River, one of the main river routes to the north. Not only did this fort serve to deter the Iroquois, it quickly became, as intended, a main base for the fur trade. Within a few years the Jesuits established a mission there, and settlers began clearing the adjacent land. But the intervening forest land between Quebec and Trois-Rivières remained wilderness for several years. This new settlement was, in effect, a satellite trading and missionary post of Quebec, and communications between the two along the St.


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Lawrence were constantly threatened by marauding Iroquois war parties. Had the aim of the French been purely a colonizing one, it would have been far better for them to concentrate their meager resources in one consolidated colony at Quebec. But commerce and evangelism dictated westward expansion by leaps and bounds; consolidation had to come later. In 1638 Jean Nicolet, an agent of the Company of New France voyaged to Lake Superior, not to Lake Michigan as has been claimed, to establish trade relations with the Winnebago and arrange a peace between them and their old foes the Huron. A vast and distant new region was thus opened to commercial exploration. This was the pattern that eventually brought most of the continent under nominal French control, and led to its destruction. The Company of New France, by the terms of its charter, was obligated to bring out two to three hundred colonists a year and to settle 4000 people on the land by 1643. It paid far more than lip service to this commitment. In 1634, to avoid having to raise more capital or to diminish its trading profits, the company began the practice of granting large tracts of virgin wilderness as seigneuries to individuals on condition that the grantees bring out settlers and get the land cleared. That year Robert Giffard, a company servant, obtained a large fief at Beauport, a few miles below Quebec. He brought a goodly number of settlers from France and got them established in his seigneury. During the next few years some members of the French gentry, Jean Juchereau de Meur, Pierre Legardeur de Repentigny and his brother Charles Legardeur de Tilly, and the Leneuf brothers, Jacques Leneuf de la Poterie and Michel Leneuf du Hérisson, obtained large seigneurial grants along the river near Quebec, brought their families, laborers, and servants, and began clearing the land. The Jesuits also brought workmen, laborers, and settlers to bring their lands into production. In the early seventeenth century land was regarded as the basis of all real wealth, and there were not many avenues for the safe investment of capital, let alone its acquisition. In the hierarchical society of the age, social status was all-important and was measured to no small degree by the amount of land a family owned. A landless peasant or workman settling in Canada could have land for the asking and could enjoy privileges denied his class in France, privileges such as hunting and fishing as well as freedom from taxes and all manner of restrictions that bedeviled the lower classes in Europe. Granted all these attractive features and more, the fact remained that beginning life afresh in the Canadian wilderness was a daunting proposition. There were, first of all, the dangers of the Atlantic crossing. The voyage could take anywhere from three weeks to more than three months. In the early seventeenth century, the carrying of passengers was a new thing. The ships of the day were not built for it, and the crews had little experience in coping with the problems it entailed. Food supplies sometimes ran out if


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headwinds endured too long; then scurvy took its toll. As late as the mid-eighteenth century, if fewer than 10 percent of the ship's company died during a crossing, it was considered a good trip. 3 French peasants and artisans, who had likely never seen the sea, must have thought twice before deciding to take their chances in the Canadian wilderness. Those who did, once arrived in the colony, were faced with the back-breaking task of clearing the land to plant a crop. The arable land in the St. Lawrence Valley was covered with dense hardwood forests, mainly oak, birch, elm, and maple, interspersed with stands of pine. Cutting down these trees, clearing away the trunks and slash, usually by burning, was no task for the lazy or the feeble. Two acres were as much as a man could hope to clear in a year. Then a few years had to elapse to allow the stumps and roots to rot sufficiently for them to be removed and the field cleared for the plow. Much of this labor had to be performed during the summer months, while dense clouds of mosquitoes and black flies made life almost unbearable for newcomers from Europe. But these insects were as nothing compared to the menace of marauding Iroquois, waiting to cut down the unwary. Little wonder, then, that the population of New France increased slowly; by 1640 it numbered only 359, and ten years later it was estimated to be 675.4 In order to stimulate interest in their work in New France, the Jesuits began the publication of their annual Relations. These carefully edited accounts of their activities in the mission field, combined with appeals for aid, were almost paradoxical. On the one hand they described the hardships that the missionaries had to endure, the immensity of their task, the constant danger from the Iroquois, and on the other they stressed the need for more settlers to consolidate the colony, pointing out all the advantages that the country could offer to workmen and peasants in France, who too frequently did not know where their next meal was coming from. The Relation of 1636, for example, contained much sound advice to prospective immigrants, but accounts of the devastation wrought by the Iroquois, the constant state of terror they engendered, and the horrible tortures they inflicted on any so unfortunate as to be taken alive were not well calculated to cause an exodus from France to Canada. The religious orders, principally the Jesuits, were responsible for what little development there was in the colony. The Ursulines and the Soeurs Hospitalières of Dieppe, encouraged by the Jesuits, in 1639 established a school for girls and a hospital at Quebec. Originally, they had intended to devote themselves principally to the Indians and by serving them to win them over to the Christian faith. In this aim they failed. The Indians resisted their best efforts, but they remained to afford future colonists their services. All these religious institutions were completely dependent on funds provided by the parent order or by devout individuals in France. Existing as


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they did in this hand-to-mouth fashion, they were frequently on the verge of being forced to give up and return to France. Only blind faith and a very profound sense of commitment kept them going. One of the chief agencies for strengthening the colony was the powerful, very wealthy, and very influential secret lay society, the Compagnie de St. Sacrement, formed between 1627 and 1630 by the then Viceroy of New France, the Duc de Ventadour, to promote the aims of extreme right-wing Catholicism. 5 As early as 1636 the Jesuits in New France had proposed founding a missionary settlement at Montreal. Three years later with Father Charles Lalemant, until recently Superior of the Jesuits in New France, acting as intermediary, the Compagnie de St. Sacrement was instrumental in bringing it about. This clandestine organization, dedicated to increasing the authority of the Church, its membership made up of men of great piety and either great wealth or political power, was persuaded to support the Société de Notre Dame de Montréal, established in 1640 by Jean-Jacques Olier, the founder of the Messieurs de St. Sulpice. This society, sometimes known as Messieurs les associés pour la conversion des Sauvages de la Nouvelle France en l'Ile de Montréal, was able to raise a large amount of money, to obtain a grant of the larger part of the island of Montreal (they obtained the remainder in 1659), and to recruit a party of some fifty devout colonists under the command of Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, a thirty-three-year-old army veteran whose piety had greatly impressed the members of the society. Late in 1641 they arrived at Quebec, to the great joy of the settlers there. A few months earlier the Iroquois had renewed their assaults on the French and their allies, ambushing them along the waterways and in their fields. These reinforcements from France seemed providential. Governor Charles Huault de Montmagny, who had succeeded Champlain after his death in 1635, and the people at Quebec were therefore dismayed to learn that Maisonneuve intended to take his party to Montreal where they would be exposed to the full fury of the Iroquois. They did their best to persuade him to abandon this suicidal scheme and settle near Quebec. But Maisonneuve, imbued with the spirit of the crusaders, declared that were every tree on the island to be changed into an Iroquois, his honor would still oblige him to go there and found a colony. The following spring the group departed from Quebec and established their post of Ville Marie, on a site once selected as suitable by Champlain and partially cleared. Champlain had chosen this particular spot with an eye to the fur trade. The island of Montreal itself, some thirty miles long and ten miles across, stands at the junction of the two great waterways to the interior, the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. The latter was the main route of the Huron and Algonkin, bringing their cargoes of furs to trade with the French. A trading post at this point spared them the long paddle to


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Trois-Rivières or Quebec, and exposure to ambush by the Mohawk who traveled by way of the Richelieu to the St. Lawrence, downstream from Montreal. In fact, the western nations had suggested to Champlain that he establish a post there. The land on and about the island was very fertile, and being some fifty miles south of Quebec's position, it was hoped that the winters would be less severe. That the site was so advantageous for the fur trade indicated that it was equally well suited for missionary work, since both activities were dependent on the Indians. There is no gainsaying that Montreal was established, not for commercial reasons, but solely for religious purposes. It can claim to be the only great metropolis in North America so founded. Father Vimont, who accompanied the colonists to Montreal in 1642, explained that the site was chosen because it ". . . gives access and an admirable approach to all the Nations of this vast country . . . so that, if peace prevailed among these peoples they would land thereon from all sides." The motives of the colonists, he made clear, were purely altruistic: "Their intention is to have houses built in which to lodge the savages, to till the soil in order to feed them; to establish seminaries for their instruction and an Hôtel-Dieu for succoring their sick." 6 The infant colony was able to maintain itself on this high religious plane for only a few years. The commercial opportunities latent in the site were too obvious to be neglected. Many of the original settlers, and certainly their governor Maisonneuve, preserved their religious fervor intact, spurning commerce; others did not. The society in France encountered great difficulty in recruiting colonists in subsequent years and had to enlist any who offered themselves. Men such as Jacques Le Ber and Charles Le Moyne, although they lived exemplary lives, made fortunes as merchant fur traders. Others were quick to follow their example. Dollier de Casson, the Superior of the Sulpicians at Montreal, in 16721673 commented not only on the religious aspects of the establishment but also on its commercial assets, stating "there is no doubt that the spot is one of the best in the country for the inhabitants, because of the trade they can do there with the savages who come down the river in canoes thereto from all the nations living higher up the river."7 For the first twenty years after its establishment, while Maisonneuve was in command, piety, indeed, puritanism, dominated in Montreal, albeit its ardor dwindled as the population increased. As late as 1663, a Montreal resident was fined 10 livres for plowing "in plain view" on a Sunday, but fifty years later the intendant had to issue an ordonnance forbidding the bachelors of Montreal to maintain their mistresses in the town in so flagrant a manner.8 That the handful of colonists at Montreal was able to survive during those early years was little short of a miracle. Thirty years later Dollier de Casson remarked: "Truly, God showed His favour to these new colonists by


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not letting the Iroquois discover them too soon.'' Had the Iroquois known that a settlement was to be established on territory they claimed, doubtless they would have been there in force to oppose it, but their war parties were concentrated that year along the Ottawa and in the Georgian Bay area. For the ensuing two years communications between Huronia and Quebec were severed as the Iroquois attacked the French settlements in earnest; Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and even the area around Quebec, were besieged. During these years no furs came down from the west, and the colony's meager strength, some three to four hundred colonists all told, was steadily reduced as the casualties mounted. Only with great difficulty, and by offering extravagant terms, was the Society of Montreal able to induce enough men to reinforce its missionary outpost. In 1644 Father d'Endemare wrote to a friend at Dijon, describing conditions in the colony: It is almost impossible to make either peace or war with these barbarians; not peace because war is their life, their amusement, and their source of profit all in one; not war because they make themselves invisible to those who seek them and only show themselves when they have heavy odds in their favour. Go to hunt them in their villages and they fade into the forest. Short of levelling all the forests in the country, it is impossible to trap them or to halt the destruction of these thieves. This is why one can travel in the settlements only in armed bands or in barques armed with cannon and soldiers. Fishing and hunting is forbidden to the French; the fish and the birds have a truce with the fishers and hunters. The beauty of the country is now only to be looked at from afar. One can hardly gather greens in a garden for a salad in safety, and in order to get any supplies of wood everyone has to go in battle order or stand guard. It is not that these thieves are always all around us, but that one is never sure either that they are there or that they are not hence we have to beware of them all the time. Were it not that we hope God will eventually deliver us the country would have to be abandoned, for we are well aware that human strength and wisdom alone cannot save us. 9 In 1644 the queen mother, Anne of Austria, responded to urgent appeals from the Society of Montreal and had a further reinforcement of sixty soldiers dispatched to New France, forty having been sent in 1642. The Jesuits obtained donations from wealthy individuals amounting to 90,000 livres to help defray the costs of defending the settlements. Without this assistance the tenuous French hold on the St. Lawrence Valley could not have been maintained. It barely survived from one year to the next. The role of the mercantile company as a colonizing agent and its influence in colonial affairs had shrunk almost to nothing. Power had been transferred, by default, to the religious and the military men in the colony. It was under these circumstances that a group of the leading settlers proposed the formation of a purely Canadian company to take over the fur trade monopoly and administer the colony's affairs. The Jesuits gave them


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their strong support. The directors of the Company of New France, plagued by the loss of revenue when no furs were shipped, heavily indebted as a result of dishonest operations by certain employees, and under pressure from the court where the queen had hearkened to Jesuit counsel, were quite willing to cede their privileges to the Canadian group. In March 1645, the terms of the agreement were ratified whereby the Community of the Habitants of New France was empowered to grant lands under seigneurial tenure and received a monopoly on the marketing of all furs in New Francethat is, the settlers were free to trap or trade with the Indians as before but they had to sell their furs to the Community of the Habitants. In return it was required to pay the costs of the colonial administrationsalaries and upkeep of the governor, the clergy, and the militaryand, inevitably, to bring at least twenty immigrants to the colony each year. The Company of New France retained its title to the land and the right to appoint the governor and officers of justice. This Community of the Habitants was composed of all heads of families in the colony and divided into three classes, principal, middle, and lower. The profits of the fur trade were to be divided into three equal shares, one to each class, then divided among the members. It has been argued that the half dozen leading men in the colony who organized the Community diverted most of the profits of the fur trade into their own pockets and obtained official posts for themselves with generous emoluments attached. 10 They did have themselves appointed directors, but with such a small population in the colony, it is likely that there were no others capable of organizing, or directing, the Company. Since the colonial budget was fixed at 49,000 livres a year, to pay the salaries of the governor and junior officials, the military garrison, and grants to the religious orders, it did not leave much for the directors. Yet quarrels quickly ensued over the allocation of funds. The Jesuits, in 1646, declared that the directors were a bunch of thieves who had used their posts to line their own pockets. It is virtually impossible to discover how much credence should be given such accusations. The evidence is very scanty, and what there is derives from parties who were anything but disinterested, or else were retelling hearsay accounts of years earlier. Perhaps the soundest judgment was that rendered a few years later by a royal commissioner, Louis Gaudet-Dufont, who was sent to investigate conditions in the colony and declared that the accused were all men without education or experience and nearly all of them were incapable of resolving problems of any consequence.11 In any event, in 1647 the crown established a form of representative government in the colony. A Council was constituted comprising the governor general, the superior of the Jesuits, and the governor of Montreal. A local official with the imposing title of Admiral of the Fleet and three syndics elected by the people of the three districts, Quebec, Trois-Rivières, and Montreal, were to attend the council but with a deliberative voice only.


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One piece of evidence that has survived suggests that this Council was not unmindful of the interests of the humbler settlers. In order to pay the administrative costs of the Community of the Habitants and to discharge its debts, a tax of 50 percent had been levied on beaver pelts. In 1653 one of the syndics informed the Council that the price of goods in the colony was so highthe markup charged by the La Rochelle merchants being 60 percent for dry goods and 100 percent for wines and spiritsthat the settlers could not realize a reasonable profit on their trade with the Indians. The syndic asked that the tax be reduced to 25 percent and the Council granted the request. 12 In 1657 the membership of the Council was altered by royal decree to include four members elected by the settlers, thus giving them a greater voice in the direction of the colony's affairs. But no matter what form the administrative framework might take, the colony was dependent on agriculture for subsistence and the fur trade to provide the goods that had to be imported from France, and both activities were at the mercy of the Iroquois rather than of the Council. When, in 1645, the Iroquois made peace, the Huron brigades brought vast quantities of furs to the Community's warehouses. In 1646 a profit of close to 100,000 livres was realized, and in 1648, 250,000 livres. Then, in 1649, the Iroquois onslaught against the Huron began in earnest. This great trading nation, and its intricate commercial empire upon which the French fur trade had in a large measure come to depend, was shattered. The Jesuit Relation for 16521653 bleakly stated: "For a year the warehouse at Montreal has not bought a single beaver from the Indians." Destroyed too were the Jesuit missions in Huronia. The fur trade and religious frontier had suddenly been driven back some four hundred miles to Montreal. The destruction of Huronia made very plain how closely intertwined were the fur trade and missionary work, both being entirely dependent on the Indians for their essential ingredients, furs and heathen souls. Although begun by the Recollets, the Huronia mission had made very few converts prior to the arrival of the Jesuits in 1626.13 In 1632 the Recollets were excluded from the Canadian mission field by order of Cardinal Richelieu. From this time on the Jesuits dominated it, and within the colony proper they came to wield influence that, in some circles, came to seem sinister. There can be little doubt, however, that they were better qualified to undertake the task. The fervor of the Catholic Reformation was still strong, and no group was more ardent to establish the Roman faith among pagans and heretics alike than the Jesuits. They were all intelligent men, of exceptionally strong character, militant, and highly disciplined. Their zeal for missionary work verged on the fanatical; death in the pursuance of their task held no fears for them. They regarded martyrdom as a most sublime end, one to be coveted; indeed they became convinced that martyrs were essential to accomplish their mission.14 At first the Jesuits, like the Recollets, the Ursulines, and the Soeurs


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Hospitalières, acted on the assumption that the Indians had to be civilized and assimilated into French civilization before they could properly be converted to Christianity; 15 that is, comprehend the religion and live by it. In this these missionaries all had very little success. The Indians they encountered at Quebec were for the most part Montagnais, nomads who lived an extremely primitive existence. When they were persuaded to leave their children with the religious to be educated, it was only for the summer. In the autumn when they returned to the northern forests, they took their children with them; more often than not the children, once the novelty wore off, refused to submit to discipline or stay cooped up in the classroom and ran away to rejoin their families. Eventually the clergy had to admit defeat. The Ursulines then devoted their considerable talents to educating the children of the colonists and an occasional Indian girl. The Jesuits established their college for boys at Quebec in 1635, the first institution of higher learning to come into existence in America north of Mexico. The following year it had all of twenty registered students studying under Father Charles Lalemant, Canada's first professor. The sons of Canadian settlers were now able to obtain as good an education at Quebec as could be obtained in a French provincial town. At the same time the Jesuits did not relinquish their main aim of converting the Indian nations to Christianity. Refusing to be discouraged by the seeming impossibility of the task and supplied with ample funds by the wealthy and devout in France, they maintained a mission among the Montagnais on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, one at Miscou at the mouth of the Baie de Chaleur, and another on Cape Breton. The missionaries who served the northern Montagnais had by far the worst of it. This primitive people had not learned to store food, let alone grow it. Their entire lives were spent in hunting and collecting, living hand-to-mouth. In winter they moved constantly through the dense forest in search of game, their only shelter a lodge made of saplings and bark, hardly deeper than the snow, and not high enough for a man to stand in erect. Men, women, children, and dogs with their fleas crowded in until there was no room to move, and in the center a fire filled the cramped space with smoke. There they huddled, roasted on one side, clothing scorched, and frozen on the other side as icy blasts whistled through cracks in the bark. Sometimes the smoke was so dense inside that the occupants could breath only by placing their faces against the ground. "I have," wrote Father Le Jeune, "sometimes remained several hours in that position, especially during the most severe cold and when it snowed; for it was then the smoke assailed us with the greatest fury."16 Semistarvation was normal for these nomads, interspersed with brief periods of gross gluttony when game was killed, followed by days when the choice was to eat putrid meat or starve. These physical tortures were not the worst that the missionaries had to endure. The problem of mastering the Indian language, finding some way to


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communicate the concepts of Christianity to these barbarians, and gaining some ascendancy over them in order to induce them to accept the tenets and live by them were the hardest, particularly when the Indian medicine men feared that they would lose their power and status were their people to hearken to the intruder. Father Le Jeune remarked: The cold, heat, annoyance of the dogs, sleeping in the open air and upon the bare ground; the position I had to assume in their cabins, rolling myself up in a ball or crouching down . . . hunger, thirst, the poverty and filth of their smoked meats, sicknessall these things were merely play to me in comparison to the smoke and the malice of the Sorceror. The missionaries persevered in their heartbreaking task until the end of the century, then, with new mission fields opening in the far west among tribes giving promise of better results, the Tadoussac mission was reluctantly abandoned. During those years, however, the Jesuits among the Montagnais, in their rovings, acquired much knowledge of the topography of the area between the St. Lawrence and James Bay and established a claim to the territory for France. It was in the west, in Huronia, a vast area bounded by Georgian Bay, Lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario, and Simcoe, that the Jesuits concentrated their major effort. The Huron, estimated to number some thirty to thirty-five thousand, had attained a more advanced culture than the Algonkin nations. Living in semipermanent villages, they depended on agriculture for their main food supplies and traded their surplus corn with the northern and western tribes for furs. In 1634 the Jesuits established St. Joseph mission in the village of Ihonatiria and three years later a second mission at nearby Ossossané. Then, in 1639, a much more ambitious establishment, named Ste. Marie, was set up near the mouth of the Wye River. It consisted of a chapel, hospital, mill, stables, barns, a residence for the priests and another for the lay workers, all surrounded by a log palisade with stone bastions. As many as sixty-six French resided there at one time, priests, lay brothers, servants, a surgeon, an apothecary, and a number of artisans. Cattle, pigs, and poultry were brought by canoe from Quebec, and fields were cleared to grow wheat, corn, and vegetables sufficient to feed the hundreds of Indian converts who eventually came to settle nearby. Rarely, however, were there more than three priests at Ste. Marie at any one time; the rest, some eight or ten, were usually away serving the missions in outlying villages, or traveling by canoe and along woodland trails to the more remote Petun, or Tobacco, nation, the Neutral to the southwest, and the northern Algonquian tribes. These tiny outposts of French and Christian civilization, separated from the settlements on the St. Lawrence by hundreds of miles of wilderness, formed a unique frontier, a frontier of the intellect. There the products of the highly sophisticated Baroque civilization confronted the Stone Age.


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The Indians, although curious about the strange religious practices and beliefs of these Europeans, had a religion of their own which sufficed for their needs and which they showed a great reluctance to abandon. Theirs was a cruel world in which sudden death could come at any time. In seeking to explain chance events and the phenomena of nature that affected their lives at every turn, they had developed a deep-rooted set of mystic beliefs. For them, the natural world, inanimate objects as well as animals, was inhabited by spirits; some were benevolent, some malevolent, all had to be placated, appeased, or at least acknowledged. They believed that in their dreams they were in communication with the spirit world; thus, to dream of success in the hunt ensured it; to dream of disaster caused plans to be abandoned. Some among them were able to induce conditions of hysteria in themselves and in this way communicate with the spirits. These were the shamans, the wise men, who healed the sick with simple remedies or magic, and gave advice on what action to take to cope with major problems. They were the priests of the Indian culture. Others possessed supernatural powers, but used them malevolently; these were the sorcerers, and they had to be appeased. One great difficulty in any attempt to understand the religious beliefs of the Indians at the time of their first contact with Europeans is that these beliefs were passed from one generation to the next orally. The Indians had developed a large body of myths and legends to account for the inexplicable in nature, and although some of the Jesuits sought to understand these beliefs, the language barrier and the desire to impose their own alien beliefs made real understanding virtually impossible. Yet this primitive religion was intricately interwoven into the whole of Indian life and society. The early Recollets and Jesuits discovered that the Indians appeared to believe in a supreme being and in an after life, hence in the immortality of the soul. The problem thus became whether these beliefs could be accepted in essence and amended to accord with Christian beliefs, or whether they had to be destroyed, eradicated, then replaced by a pure Christian creed. For many years opinions were divided on this issue. At first the Jesuits, appalled by the strange mores and incomprehensible practices of the Indians, wished to eradicate everything and impose a completely European scale of values, way of life, and religion; but as they came to understand the Indians better and to discover how impossible such a task was, they came to accept much and to seek to build on it. In 1647 Father Ragueneau wrote:

One must be very careful before condemning a thousand things among their customs, which greatly offend minds brought up and nourished in another world. It is easy to call irreligion what is merely stupidity, and to take for diabolical working something that is nothing more than human; and then, one thinks he is obliged to forbid as impious certain things that are done in all innocence, or, at most, are silly but not criminal customs . . . I have no hesitation in saying that we have been too severe in this point. 17


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Jesuit mission of Ste. Marie des Hurons, reconstructed on the original site. (Huronia Historical Development Council, Province of Ontario)


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This statement has to be regarded as one man's opinion. Others of the Jesuits were not so tolerant. Some found the trials of everyday life among the Huron almost unendurable and the complexity of their self-imposed task heartbreaking, but at the same time these very factors gave them a deep sense of personal satisfaction. The greater the obstacles, the greater the challenge and the more worthwhile the achievement in meeting it. Although in some ways very humble, these Jesuits were not without pride. Indeed, in the humbling of their own flesh there was an element of pride. In the Huron long houses the filth, smoke, squalor, fleas, and stench, the constant sight of what appeared to the Jesuits to be lewdness, were bad enough; the constant awareness that death could come at any moment was harder still on even the most steely nerved. Father Le Jeune, after describing these physical vicissitudes remarked: Add to all this, that our lives depend upon a single thread; and if, wherever we are in the world, we are to expect death every hour, and to be prepared for it that is particularly the case here. For not to mention that your cabin is only, as it were, chaff and that it might be burned at any moment, despite all your care to prevent accidents, the malice of the Savages gives especial cause for almost perpetual fear; a malcontent may burn you down, or cleave your head open in some lonely spot. And then you are responsible for the sterility or fecundity of the earth, under penalty of your life; you are the cause of droughts; if you cannot make rain, they speak of nothing less than making away with you. 18 In the face of all this the Jesuits persisted. Their first task was to master the Indian language. Fortunately, Huron was the lingua franca of the Indian nations north of the Great Lakes, but to acquire fluency in it was extremely difficult. Words and phrases had to be noted, checked, and revised to establish a definite meaning, and many of the abstract concepts of the Christian religion were completely novel to the Huron; hence there were no words with which to explain them. In addition, the Jesuits had little opportunity to pursue this task. As Father Charles Garnier noted: Frequently I do not have a quarter of an hour in the day to study owing to the frequent visits one must make and the horde of Indians who interrupt us in our cabin whenever we are there . . . before I arrived here all that it had proved possible to do was to acquire a smattering of the language . . . those who think that one has only to show a crucifix to an Indian to convert him deceive themselves. The difficulties are far greater than one thinks. The conversion of the Indians takes time. The first six or seven years will appear sterile to some; and if I should say ten or twelve, I would possibly not be far from the truth.19 The Jesuits were very conscious of the fact that they were in Huronia only on sufferance. In 1636 there were only six Jesuits, their servants, and lay assistants in the area. Five years later there were still only thirteen


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priests and seventeen laymen in the whole of Huronia. 20 Compulsion was out of the question, converts could only be made by persuasion or by subterfuge, and persuasion proved to be extremely difficult. The Indians found little that appealed to them in the Christian way of life, certainly not enough to cause them to abandon their old beliefs, which had sufficed for so long. Moreover, attempts by the Jesuits to make them change many of their established customs did not sit well. The Indians lived without laws and with very few restraints; every man was free to live as he thought best, and crimes were punished by the victim or his kin, not by the collectivity. The only restraint on action was the normal desire to be held in esteem by his fellows. Women were the masters of their own bodies and from puberty until pregnancy they gave themselves to any male who pleased them. To the Jesuits this was carnal sin. They learned to overlook the Indian girls' total lack of modesty, their habit of divesting themselves of all clothing whenever it impeded their actions, but they could not tolerate their seeming lewdness.21 Some others of the French, the men sent by the fur trade companies to establish good trade relations, found the Indian moral standards very acceptable and took full advantage of the Indian girls' total lack of sexual inhibitions. Thus, when the Jesuits tried to persuade the Indians to live chaste lives, they met a cool reception. The Indians saw no merit in such an innovation and pointedly asked why, if chastity were such a fine thing, all the French Christians did not practice it. To this the missionaries were hard put to find a convincing answer. They found that before they could hope to enjoy any real success, they had to undermine the old beliefs of the Indians, and in so doing, they helped to destroy their culture. One approach to this was to demonstrate that the Indians' reliance on dreams to govern their future actions was inefficacious. Once a few of the Huron had been converted and openly rejected the belief in dreams as a means to communicate with the spirit world, this task became easier, for when these converts had as much success at the hunt as the pagans, the latter began to doubt their old beliefs. When the prayers of the Jesuits for a good hunt, a catch of fish, for rain after drought, or for good crops were answered, the Indians were impressed and admitted that the Jesuits were greater shamans than their own. Another weapon in the Jesuit armory totally new to the Indians was the concept of hell. Father Le Jeune commented ''many of them are very glad to die Christians, not in truth, so much through love as through fear of falling into the fires with which they are threatened."22 If the Huron were occasionally impressed by the efficacy of Jesuit prayers, they were quick to blame them for anything that went amiss. In the 1630s they had ample reason for this, when a European disease against which they had no resistance struck their villages. Although only a guess can be made of the total number of deaths, it appears that about half the Huron nation, or over 15,000, died in the decade.23 The losses were particularly


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heavy among the children. The Jesuits saw in this, as in other hindrances to their endeavors, the work of Satan. It did, however, offer opportunities hitherto lacking and they quickly seized them. One problem had always been that they feared to baptize an Indian unless reasonably certain that he would henceforth lead a Christian life; but with the moribund this precaution was unnecessary. The missionaries were now able to baptize the dying by the hundred, but they were forced in most instances to do it surreptitiously, for the Indians, remarking that death almost always followed swiftly on the priest's ministrations, associated cause with effect. Also because the Jesuits were blamed for the disease, they encountered more resistance than ever to their missionary work, but they took satisfaction from the fact that the thousands whom they had somehow managed to baptize had gone to a heaven that otherwise would have been barred to them. What was lost to this world was gained for the next. No sooner had this plague run its course and begun to abate than another, and even worse, disaster struck the Huron. The Iroquois had warred with them intermittently for a long time, but they had also sought to negotiate a commercial alliance in order to obtain furs, no longer obtainable in their own territories, to trade at Albany for the European goods they were now dependent on. Between 1640 and 1645 they concentrated their attacks on the French settlements between Quebec and Montreal, and blockaded the Ottawa River route. They gained some furs from their ambushes along this river but not enough; and when, in 1645, they succeeded in negotiating a commercial alliance and peace treaty with the Huron and French, they gained nothing. The Huron took a huge store of furs to the French and none to the Iroquois. The Iroquois thereupon embarked on a war of extermination against the Huron preparatory to taking over their middleman role with the northern and western nations. In 1647 their sudden assaults forced the Huron to abandon some of their outlying villages and withdraw to the more populous villages near Ste. Marie for protection. No canoes traveled to or from Montreal all that year for fear of ambush. Huronia was isolated. Attempts were made to renew the peace treaty with the Onondaga and to arrange a military alliance with the Andastes, an Iroquois nation occupying lands in the Susquehanna Valley and hostile to the Five Nations Confederacy. For some months the Jesuits were confident that the Iroquois assaults would be curbed, and in their Relations they dwelt on the success the mission was at last beginning to enjoy. At or near the main mission post of Ste. Marie there were some thirteen Huron villages, and the mission itself was a sizable establishment. During the year over 3000 persons had been given shelter and food. The converts now numbered in the hundreds, and over two thousand in all had been baptized, although the majority of these last had been moribund. In 1648 a Huron party, 250 strong, made the twenty-day journey to the French settlements and routed an Iroquois war party near Trois-Rivières. Some thirty French accompanied them back to Huronia, taking with them a heifer


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and a small cannon. Since three young boys were among this party, it is evident that the French were confident the Iroquois threat would be contained. 24 In their absence, however, a large Iroquois war party had made its stealthy way to the borders of Huronia. No watch was kept at the two frontier villages of St. Joseph mission, and many of the men were away hunting. Suddenly, at sunrise, the Iroquois debouched from the cover of the forest near one of the villages. Rushing through the surrounding corn fields, they quickly hacked a breach in the palissade. Within there was terror and panic at the first triumphant Iroquois war cries. Some of the warriors tried to make a stand, but it was futile. They were quickly hacked down. Neither women nor children were spared as the Iroquois swept through the village. Father Antoine Daniel hurriedly baptized all he could before he too was butchered. It was all over very quickly. The bark long houses were set ablaze, with terrified or wounded Huron cowering inside to be consumed in the flames. The neighboring village was served in the same fashion. The survivors fled to Ste. Marie. Of a total population in the two villages of some three thousand, it was estimated that seven hundred, mostly women and children, had been killed or captured. The destruction of these villages spread terror throughout Huronia. For the Jesuits, however, there was the consolation that many of the slain had been baptized during the assault who otherwise might not have been. Indeed, nearly 1300 were baptized that year.25 After this Iroquois army had withdrawn, the death toll continued to mount. The Huron usually stored enough food to last them through at least one winter, but the supplies at St. Joseph had gone up in flames. Some fifteen outlying villages were abandoned. Over 6000 persons took refuge at Ste. Marie. The Jesuits did what they could to feed the multitude, but starvation stared them all in the face. By spring Huron morale was at a low ebb. In mid-March the Iroquois struck again, far sooner than could have been expected, for the Indian nations usually made war only when the trees were in full leaf to provide cover for surprise, ambush, and swift retreat. This Iroquois army, Seneca and Mohawk, one thousand strong, well armed with Dutch muskets, had wintered on the borders of Huronia. The mission villages of St. Louis and St. Ignace met the same fate as St. Joseph. Fathers Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were less fortunate than had been Father Daniel. They were taken alive and for hours had to endure the most hideous tortures before they expired at the stake. At Ste. Marie the smoke rising from the burning villages had been visible. The terror-stricken survivors soon began to arrive. Next day the Iroquois moved against Ste. Marie but a Huron counterattack drove them off with heavy losses. They retired to St. Ignace, devoted their attention to burning their prisoners for a while, then began the long march back to their own country with a rich harvest of scalps and plundered furs. The surviving Jesuits and the French laymen at Ste. Marie now took council what to do.


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Although the Huron warriors still greatly outnumbered the Iroquois invaders, their will to resist was broken. To them it seemed that nothing could withstand the Iroquois with their muskets. Flight out of their reach seemed the only salvation. Some sought refuge with the Neutral nation, others with the Petun and the Erie. One entire Huron village surrendered to the Iroquois, its occupants were spared and incorporated into the ranks of the Seneca, greatly reinforcing them. 26 To the Jesuits, there seemed little point in remaining in Huronia. The only reason for being there had vanished with the destruction of the Huron villages. In the hopes of salvaging something, they decided to withdraw to St. Joseph Island in Georgian Bay with a large body of the Huron and there begin again. On May 15, 1649, the extensive buildings at Ste. Marie, constructed at great cost, were burned to prevent their desecration by the pagan foe. Some three hundred families, most of them Christians, removed with the Jesuits to the ill-chosen island. There was not enough food to feed a fraction of this number and by the following spring only a few hundred remained alive. Gathering what little food they could, the survivors abandoned the island. Some went to Quebec with the Jesuits to eke out a wretched existence at Lorette, a few miles from the settlement; others struck south to join the Andastes on the Susquehannah River. The Huron nation and trading empire was no more. Only piles of ashes, charred human bones, clearings in the forest where vast corn fields had once stood, marked its extent. The French fur trade and missionary frontier had been driven back, but only temporarily. Five years before the destruction of Huronia a Jesuit commented: We are only at the entrance of a land which on the side of the west, as far as China, is full of Nations more populous than the Huron. Toward the South, we see other Peoples beyond number, to whom we can have access only by means of this door at which we now stand. In April 1649 Father Charles Garnier stated that the ruin of the Huron would force the Jesuits to work among the more distant nations. This, he believed, was clearly part of God's grand design.27 The French fur traders, too, were now obliged to voyage to the western Great Lakes to trade with the "far Indians" and persuade these Algonquian nations and the remnants of the Huron to take their furs to the French settlements. In 1656 alone over thirty Frenchmen, Pierre Esprit Radisson and Médart Chouart de Groseilliers among them, voyaged to the far west to establish commercial relations with the distant tribes. Rumors were soon circulating of a great river that ran south to Mexico. The Iroquois, meanwhile, had suffered heavy losses in their assaults on the Erie and Neutral nations. But the intended destruction of these nations, along with the Huron, had not been an end in itself. It was dominance of the Great Lakes basin that the Iroquois desired. In 1653 they succeeded in


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negotiating a peace treaty with the French, and Jesuit missionaries were allowed to establish themselves in the villages of the Five Nations. The Iroquois were now free to trade at both Montreal and Albany, to play off one against the other. All they had to do was to step into the middleman's role vacated by the Huron. This, however, eluded them. The Ottawa and the remnants of the Huron who had fled westward took over. The Ottawa were wellqualified for this task. They were expert canoemen and they now began garnering furs from all the tribes, except the Sioux their ancient foes, in the western Great Lakes area. By 1660 the French had established a trading post near Chagouamigon Bay, on the south shore of Lake Superior, and in 1665 a Jesuit was resident there, seeking to convert the large mixed population driven out of the eastern Great Lakes region by the Iroquois assault. After being interrupted for only a few years the flow of western furs once again began to reach Montreal and Trois-Rivières. Significantly, none of the furs came in Iroquois canoes. It appeared that all their campaigning had been for nothing. The basis of their peace with the French was thus removedindeed, had never been operative. Once again Iroquois war parties began blockading the Ottawa. Their devastating assaults on the French settlements were renewed. By 1658 the Jesuit mission at Onondaga had to be abandoned. The fifty-three men who had comprised it managed to escape a few hours before their slow death at the stake was to occur. 28 While all this blood was being spilled in the west, the central colony was racked by internal dissension and suffered heavy losses from constant Iroquois assaults. The Iroquois blockaded the river routes, stopping the transport of furs from the west. When the settlers went out in the morning to tend their crops, they could never be sure of living to see their families at the end of the day. In the fields, behind any bush, stone, stump, or hillock, an Iroquois could conceal himself and lie patiently for hours on end, waiting for an unwary settler to come within reach of his tomahawk. In addition to individual forays, war parties of a hundred or more Iroquois warriors were ravaging the settlements from Montreal to below Quebec, destroying crops, burning homes and barns, slaughtering the unwary. In 1661 alone sixty-eight men were lost out of a total population of little more than twenty-five hundred. Those who died fighting were fortunate compared to those taken prisoner to the Iroquois cantons. More often than not they were slowly tortured to death to provide sport, and to strike fear into the hearts of all the Iroquois' foes, a form of primitive Schrechlichkeit.29 Needless to say, the Indian foes of the Iroquois responded in kind. Despite this terrible external menace, bitter wrangling between the clerical and secular authorities, and even among the clergy themselves, grew steadily worse. In 1658 a bishop had been appointed to New France but without the colony being made a bishopric. The first appointee, Abbé François de Laval de Montigny, was made Bishop of Petraeain partibus


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infideliumand Apostolic Vicar in Canada. This meant that legally he came under the direct authority of the Papacy and not, as in the case of the Gallican bishops, under the French crown, but in practice this distinction made little difference. Eventually, in 1674, Canada was made a see and Laval then became Bishop of Quebec. What made things difficult at the outset was that in 1657 the Sulpicians had taken over the parish of Montreal and became seigneurs of the island. Within a few months they were feuding bitterly with the Jesuits, and with Laval after his arrival in 1659, over ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 30 The disputes between the clergy and the secular authorities centered about the sale of brandy to the Indians. The clergy were bitterly opposed to this traffic because of the debasing effects it had on the natives, who used liquor only to get drunk; once in that condition they frequently went berserk and perpetrated the most hideous outrages. The Indians believed that when intoxicated they were transported to the dream world of their pagan gods, and there was little they would not do to achieve this.31 They would gladly trade their winter's catch of furs for enough brandy to make them drunk, particularly after an unscrupulous trader had given them a dram or two. With a few kegs of brandy the fur traders could realize far greater profits than with other goods. When the clergy demanded that the sale of liquor to the Indians be banned by the authorities, the fur traders objected strongly. The bishop responded by declaring that anyone known to have traded liquor to the natives would be excommunicated. At first the governor, Pierre de Voyer d'Argenson, supported this stand but he subsequently took offense and sanctioned the liquor trade. The bishop and the governor were immediately in bitter opposition to each other. Finally, with no hope of a surcease to this travail, both the civil and religious leaders of the colony appealed to the only agency that seemed likely to be able to help, the French crown. If aid had not come it is doubtful that New France could have survived much longer. As it was, some settlers were giving up and returning to France. One thing was very clear; as a colonizing agency private enterprise had been tried for over half a century, and found wanting. Yet by 1660 a good deal had been accomplished. The colony was now more than a mere fur trade depot. The population had passed the two thousand mark, and a good deal of land was under cultivation, enough to feed the people in normal times. The towns of Trois-Rivières and Montreal had been founded, and a generation of colonists, albeit few in number, had grown up whose roots were in Canada. The basic institutions had been establishedschools, hospitals, law courts, and a representative colonial council of sorts. If anything, the colony was over-institutionalized, and the institutions were too dependent on financial support from outside sources. But the greatest achievement was that the French had learned how to live, and live quite well, in the strange Canadian environment. They had mastered the technical skills of the Indian and had learned how to live


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among them on at least equal terms. They had voyaged far into the interior and could go anywhere on their own; they were no longer dependent on the Indians to transport or even guide them. The maps drawn by the Jesuits of this period, based on information gained from members of the order and from fur traders, indicate a fairly exact knowledge of the St. Lawrence Valley and the area around the Great Lakes Basin. The basis of future French colonial enterprise had been established: the garnering of furs and savage souls. For the Indians, the first half of the seventeenth century was far more crucial than they could possibly have imagined. During those years many thousands of them in the eastern half of North America had direct dealings with Europeans for the first time. Prior to this epoch they had lived with varying efficiency in an easy balance with nature. Hunting, and in the case of some primitive agriculture, had sufficed for their physical, social, and spiritual needs. With the advent of the French in the St. Lawrence Valley the whole way of life of the Algonkin and Iroquois nations suffered a technological and cultural revolution. Eventually ancient skills were lost as the Indians became dependent on European goods and technology. Metal replaced flint and bone; the musket replaced the lance and the bow. They now had to have knives, axes, muskets, and ammunition to hunt and for self-defense. They had to have steel needles, awls, and European trinkets to maintain individual status. They were no longer as free as they had been, for they had become dependent on these external agents over whom they had only limited influence and control. Their standard of living indubitably rose, but they had to pay an exorbitant price. Part of the price was the destruction of old cultural, social, and spiritual values. Their old religious beliefs were undermined, where they were not destroyed. The nature of war also underwent a revolution. Before the coming of the Europeans, the Indians' wars had been limited; their motivation and their primitive weapons had precluded too heavy casualties. Afterward their wars became wars of exterminationtotal war, fought for economic ends, and increasingly for ends sought by Europeans. European diseases, to which the Indians had no resistance, decimated them; and alcohol, which affected them the way narcotics affect civilized peoples today, degraded and debilitated them, weakening their resistance to the physical and moral encroachments of Europeans. The great Huron nation was virtually destroyed during these years, but it was only the first to go. Politically, lines that were to endure for a century and a half were clearly drawn by the 1660s. The French, in commercial and military alliance with the Algonquian tribes of the north, were locked in a bitter struggle between rival metropolises, that of the French and that of the European nation dominating the Hudson River. The accident of geography whereby the St. Lawrence gave easy access to the heart of the continent enabled the French to dominate the interior of North America with a mere handful of men. But to maintain this dominance close ties with the Indians were essential.


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4 Institutions and Environment The urgent appeal to the crown for aid by the civil and religious authorities in Canada could not have come at a more propitious moment. In 1663 France was at peace and in a dominant position in Europe. Louis XIV had recently taken complete power into his own hands upon the death of Cardinal Mazarin. Within a few years, under the able direction of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, France had the most efficient administration of all the countries in Europe. Colbert was responsible for internal affairs in the realm and had charge of the French colonies. His main aim was to strengthen and greatly expand the French economyincrease exports, reduce imports, achieve a favorable balance of trade and a budgetary surplus. In the attainment of these aims the French overseas colonies were intended to play an important part. They were to provide France with raw materials that the kingdom would otherwise have had to import from foreign countries, and with a market for French manufactured goods. Colbert wanted to obtain far more than intermittent shipments of furs from the French possessions on the mainland of North America, but he was fully cognizant of the value of this commodity and wished to see the trade increase. In addition to furs he wanted New France to provide the mother country with timber, ship masts, and naval stores, which were then being


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imported from Russia and Scandinavia. He also wanted it to produce an agricultural surplus and to ship foodstuffs to the French West Indies plantations. Fish, wheat, peas, and barrel staves were to be exported from Quebec to the Caribbean, and rum, molasses, and sugar were to be shipped to France; French manufactured goods were to be carried back to Canada. In other words, he wished to emulate the triangular trade of the English with their American colonies. But before any of this could be done, New France had to be made much more self-sufficient, able to stand on its own feet, and no longer dependent on France for its basic needs. A new framework of government had to be installed; capital, labor, and administrative talent had to be invested; and before these factors could be brought properly into play, the Iroquois had to be subdued to give the colony security. Within the short space of five years, Colbert accomplished all these initial steps. Indeed, he accomplished far more in that time than all the private companies had done in the preceding six decades, and thereby laid the foundations for a vast expansion of French power in North America. Colbert began his colonial reorganization by revoking the charter of the Company of New France. The outstanding debts of the Community of the Habitants were subsequently liquidated, in the same way as was done at this time with the debts of many bankrupt municipalities and societies in France. The colony's financial slate was wiped clean, but to implement Colbert's plans for Canada a great deal of capital was needed. To raise it, he formed a new commercial corporation, copied from the Dutch and English East India companies, which were enjoying success. He encountered great difficulty, however, in persuading Frenchmen, let alone foreigners, to invest in the Compagnie de l'Occident, and much of its capital had to be provided by the crown. 1 It was in fact a crown corporation directed by Colbert, and Canada was now a royal province governed by royal officials. To make the colony secure from the external threat of the Iroquois, four companies of regular troops were shipped to Quebec, followed by the Carignan Salières regiment comprising nearly eleven hundred men under veteran officers. In three campaigns these regular soldiers learned a great deal, the hard way, about campaigning in the North American forest against expert guerrilla fighters such as the Mohawk. In one campaign launched, foolhardily, in January 1666, the French suffered more casualties than they inflicted on the Iroquois. Several of their wounded survived only because the Dutch at Albany offered them sanctuary, for which the French were most grateful. The following autumn the recently appointed viceroy, Alexandre de Prouville, seigneur de Tracy, led the Carignan Salières regiment and 400 Canadian militia once again into the Mohawk country. The enemy declined to stand and fight this army that came marching through their lands with drums beating and matchlock fuses glowing. They faded into the depths of the forest.


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The four villages with all their winter food supplies were burned to the ground; a cross was planted bearing the arms of Louis XIV; and to cries of ''Vive le Roy" the Mohawk lands were claimed for France by right of conquest. This done, nothing remained but to march back to Quebec. No Mohawk were killed or captured, but they had been dealt a severe blow none the less. More particularly so since they were at this time being hard pressed by their ancient foes the Mohegan. They therefore decided to sue for peace. At the same time the other four nations of the Confederacy made overtures for a peace treaty. They had recently suffered heavy losses in their war against the western Algonquian nations. A large Mohawk and Onondaga war party had been almost annihilated by the Ottawa, and the Seneca and Cayuga had been severely mauled by the Andastes. In addition smallpox had swept through their villages. As a result of these disasters, and on receiving news of the arrival of large French military reinforcements, in July 1667 the Five Nations sent an embassy to Quebec to accept Tracy's terms. They agreed to end their hostilities with the French and their Algonquian allies. Unknown to the French, while they were subduing the Iroquois, England and France were at war. When the authorities in New York learned of this, and being greatly perturbed by the French incursions into lands they claimed, they were eager to raise a force among the northern colonies for an attack on Canada, but New England refused to cooperate. In 1667 news came that the Treaty of Breda had ended Anglo-French hostilities. Then, as later, English colonial disunity was one of the main safeguards of New France. With the Iroquois threat removed, peace restored in Europe, and initial administrative reforms in France well under way, Colbert began implementing his colonial program. The Dutch commercial threat to the French West Indies was eliminated and order restored in these valuable possessions. Acadia, ceded back to France by the Treaty of Breda, was regained in 1670 despite the spirited opposition of its governor, William Temple, who then made overtures to obtain French citizenship in a futile attempt to retain a grip on the potential resources of the area. The Chevalier de Grand Fontaine was appointed governor; a company of regular troops was sent out to garrison Port Royal, and was accompanied by some thirty settlers to augment the province's meager population, which numbered fewer than four hundred. It was, however, Canada, the colony in the St. Lawrence Valley, to which Colbert devoted his main effort. In addition to the viceroy Tracy, who returned to France in 1667, Colbert sent a tough professional soldier, Daniel de Remy, Sieur de Courcelle, to Quebec as governor general. From this time on, all the colony's governors, with one exception. Le Febvre de la Barre, were professional soldiers or naval officers. Of perhaps greater


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Alexandre de Prouville, seigneur de Tracy, lieutenant general of all French territories in North and South America, 16631667, by Lenfant. (Public Archives of Canada)


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Iroquois cantons and newly constructed forts in the Montreal region, 1666. (Public Archives of Canada)


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significance was the appointment of an intendant, Jean Talon, to the colony. This official was responsible for the administration of justice, colonial finances, and civil administration. The governor general retained control of military matters and Indian relations, but the general well-being of the colony was mainly the responsibility of the intendant. The officers and men of the Carignan Salières regiment, who had been sent to the colony on the understanding that they would return to France after eighteen months, were given every encouragement to remain. Several officers accepted seigneuries along the Richelieu River and settled there with the men of their companies, some 400 in all, as their censitaires. They were granted half pay for the first few years and the essential farm implements. It was intended that these new seigneuries along the Richelieu River would bar that main route, used by Mohawk war parties so frequently in the past to ravage the colony. The inspiration for this military settlement was the praedia militaria of ancient Rome 2a frontier settlement by veterans who could be called upon to defend the frontier at any time. It is frequently stated that the institutions of New France were feudal in origin. This is a term that obscures more than it explains, particularly when used in a pejorative sense. The term might have some relevance to the hierarchical structure of the colony's society, but that is about all. Certainly the term can hardly be applied to the seigneurial system of land tenure in Canada. As it is generally used, feudalism implies military obligation. In New France the seigneurial system was not based on military service; it was merely a method of apportioning land, bringing it into production, and obviating the evils of speculation. Title to all land rested with the king, who granted concessions to seigneurs on the condition that they get their grants cleared and make them productive. They were required to establish settlers on part of their lands, to build a mill for their use, and to maintain a court of law to settle minor disputes. For their part these settlers, or censitaires, as they were known, were required to clear the lands they had been granted and to pay modest dues, cens et rentes, to their seigneur, which amounted to less than 10 percent of their income. The censitaires did not owe military service to their seigneurs, but to the crown as members of the militia, and their militia officers were not the seigneurs but men chosen by the governor general from among their own ranks. Except in rare instances, they did not perform corvées, labor service, for their seigneurs; but they were required to serve on a crown corvée for a day or two a year, repairing roads or bridges, or doing maintenance work on the common. Any dispute between a seigneur and his censitaires was adjudicated by the intendant. Were either party to fail to fulfill his obligation, that is, to bring the land into production within a reasonable time, the intendant could, and frequently did, revoke his concession. A seigneur was not a landlord in the same way that an English colonial landowner was; he had obligations and responsibilities both to the crown and to his censitaires, and the


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intendants saw to it that he fulfilled them. They also saw to it that the censitaires fulfilled their obligations. The seigneurs were little more than land settlement agents and their financial rewards were not great. What they did gain, and what made men eager to become seigneurs, was the greatly enhanced social status, made manifest in a variety of ways. Under the old regime, social status was to no small degree independent of a man's wealth, and was eagerly sought after. If a censitaire sold his land to anyone other than a direct heir, he had to pay one-twelfth of the sale price to the seigneur, who also had the right to buy the land at the price offered by a would-be purchaser within forty days of the sale. When land was sold, what the seller received was, in essence, not the worth of the land but compensation for the improvements he had made on it. One of the main aims here was, of course, to curb speculation. Under pioneer conditions such a system had much to recommend it for the simple reason that it was skillfully devised to operate under those particular conditions. Rather than being feudal, it was very modern, that is, mid-seventeenth century. In the early years of royal government, as a result of the influx of military and civilian settlers, there was a vexing shortage of women in the colony. Colbert quickly took this problem in hand. Orphanages were scoured for robust girls of good character. The prospect of a husband, free land, tools, and other essentials, plus a crown dowry of 20 livres for those willing to cross the Atlantic proved quite appealing. Orphan girls of good family were induced to emigrate, at the crown's expense, to provide wives for the officers who had chosen to stay in the colony. Each year the ships carried hundreds of the filles du Roi to Quebec, where they were cared for by the Ursulines and Hospital sisters until they found husbands. This rarely took more than a fortnight. 3 Each year families of settlers also were sent at the king's expense, in addition to several hundred engagés, indentured laborers. As many as 500 persons were sent in a year. The indentured men were bound over to the established settlers for three years, at a modest but reasonable wage, and at the expiry of their contract were given land. In this way they gained valuable experience of local conditions, without which they would not have been able to cope on their own, and the seigneurs got more of their land cleared. Besides men and women, enough cattle, sheep, goats, and horses were shipped by the crown to make the colony self-sufficient within a few years. During these first seven or eight years of royal government, the crown invested nearly a quarter of a million livres a year in the colony. Every summer, when the ships reached Quebec there was great excitement as they unloaded their cargoes of supplies and immigrants. Bachelors eager to take a wife studied the "king's girls" with an appraising eye; seigneurs looked over the engagés for men with sturdy frames, or for one


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with a trade; and the visiting Indians stared in amazement at the first horses sent to the colony"French moose without horns"and asked how they had been made so tractable. Despite all Colbert's instructions and precautions, some of the immigrants proved to be lazy, feeble, or debauched, but on the whole there appears to have been surprisingly few of these. Apparently some of the girls sent out were most unprepossessing, and the officials at Quebec were obliged to impose restrictions on all bachelors until the last of these had been married off. A far more serious problem was the incidence of disease on the ships. Often the immigrants who survived a crossing, when ship fever had taken its toll, were more dead than alive upon arrival. Nursing them back to health was, on occasion, a large item in the colony's administrative budget of 36,000 livres a year. Fortunately, the colony had hospitals, the Hôtels-Dieu at Quebec and at Montreal, and although very hard pressed they managed somehow to cope with the sudden influx of grievously ill. As the population expanded, other institutions had to be established to care for those who were unable to care for themselves and who had no family to assume the responsibility. Every family was not only expected but was required by law to care for its indigent members. When parents became too old to provide for themselves, the children had to make provision for them. If they failed to do so, the intendant, by ordonnance, convened them and saw to it that this was done. In the final decades of the seventeenth century war conditions reduced numbers in the colony to the point where many had no family to aid them, or their families were unable to provide assistance. The crown then accepted the responsibility. In 1685 bureaux del pauvres were established in the three towns and the country districts. Their purpose was to assist the deserving poor to get back on their feet, and to prevent the undeserving poor, those who preferred mendicancy to honest toil, from becoming an economic liability and a social nuisance. Before the end of the century alms houses, the Hôpitals Généraux, were founded in Quebec and Montreal to care for the indigent, aged, incurable, and orphans, the latter being apprenticed to acquire a useful trade. Foundlings were a particular charge of the crown and were well cared for. Great care was taken that none of these unfortunates should be exploited or made to suffer unduly because of their circumstances. This undoubtedly was paternalism; it was also humanitarian. Poverty was not regarded as a sin or a crime, but as a fault in the fabric of society that had to be mended. 4 Despite heavy losses from disease, during these first years of royal government the population increased from some 2500 in 1663 to more than 6500 by 1668. By 1672 the crown had sent to Canada at least five to six thousand men and women, and there is no evidence that any of them were dragooned into going. After that date, however, government-subsidized emigration was reduced to a trickle. Some skilled tradesmen and artisans


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were sent, but under contracts that guaranteed them high wages and return passage to France once their work was completed. In addition large numbers of regular soldiers were subsequently sent; most of these settled in the colony upon being discharged. Apart from this, after 1672 the colony's population was augmented mainly by natural increase and little by immigration. When compared to the great waves of immigration that flooded into the English colonies during the hundred years between 1660 and 1760, the French effort appears meager indeed. But the circumstances of the two mother countries were very different. New France represented only one small part of Colbert's plans for French economic expansion. In France itself he was faced with a shortage of skilled labor for the new industries that he was establishing, and the vast increase in the size of the army with the onset of Louis XIV's wars drained the available supply of able-bodied men. Owing to the peculiarities of the French social system, there was a chronic shortage of investment capital for economic development. The chief aim of the newly rich middle class was to purchase a government post and then rise in the royal service and recoup the investment by means of fees or grants for faithful service. Thus the crown absorbed much of the nation's limited supplies of talent and capital. The capitalist notion that money should be invested in an industrial or commercial enterprise purely to make profit and the bulk of the profits plowed back to expand the enterprise, was quite alien to the dominant social values. It was chiefly for this reason that the economy of both France and New France expanded under the stimulus of the state, and why New France became, under royal government, a military bureaucracy. The geography of France and of Britain was also a major factor in their differing social and economic development, as well as in their colonial policies. Britain, being an island, was relatively secure from attack by foreign powersas long as it maintained a navy stronger than that of its potential foesand had no great need for a large standing army. This had several consequences. Britain could afford to export surplus manpower to its colonies, and its need for ships to defend its shores provided the means to do so. Lacking a large army, the British crown was unable to withstand the assault on its power by the aristocracy, allied with the gentry and rising capitalist class. In this way parliament rather than the crown became sovereign. France, on the other hand, surrounded by other land powers, all potentially hostile, had to maintain a large army to defend its frontiers. With such an army, a monarch could impose his will on the people, and had no need to consult them before imposing taxes. Therein lies one reason for the difference between Louis XIV's reign in France and that of the Stuarts in England. Without the English Channel, it is highly unlikely that parliamentary government would have developed in the form that it did, or that England would have become the great colonizing power that it became in


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the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More likely, it would have been another Netherlands. Given the need in France for an army and the outbreak of war with the Dutch Republic in 1672, it is not surprising that French colonial activity was somewhat curtailed. What is surprising is that despite these wars and the drive to expand the nation's economy, the crown was able to devote as much attention as it did to New France. In 1669 Colbert had declared that the colony should now be able to stand on its own feet. This it certainly did, and within five years the minister was desperately striving, without success, to restrain its proclivity for expansion. To the people in New France the future, at long last, looked very promising. In 1668 the Jesuits at Quebec reported: It is pleasant to see now almost the entire extent of the shores of our River St. Lawrence settled by new colonies, which continue to spread over more than eighty leagues of territory along the shores of this great River, where new hamlets are seen springing up here and there, which facilitate navigationrendering it more agreeable by the sight of numerous houses, and more convenient by frequent resting places. . . . Fear of the enemy no longer prevents our laborers from causing the forests to recede and from sowing their fields with all sorts of grain. . . . The Savages our allies, no longer fearing that they will be surprised on the road, come in quest of us from all directions, from a distance of five and six hundred leagueseither to reestablish their trade, interrupted by the wars; or to open new commercial dealings, as some very remote tribes claim to do, who had never before made their appearance here, and who came last Summer for that purpose. . . . Moreover since a country cannot be built up entirely without the help of manufactures, we already see that of shoes and hats begun, and those of linen and leather planned; and it is expected that the steady increase in sheep will produce sufficient wool to introduce that of woolen goods. That is what we are hoping for in a little while, since animals are becoming abundant here, especially horses, which are beginning to spread throughout the entire country. 5 All of this could not have been done under the old colonial institutions. To implement Colbert's policies in New France a new administrative framework, modeled on that of a French province but with significant differences, was established. Some of the innovations were deliberate on Colbert's part; such as attempts to introduce improvements or reforms that he would have liked to introduce in France but could not owing to the opposition of powerful vested interests. Other modifications were introduced more gradually in response to the North American environment. The theory of government was, of course, that sovereignty lay with the divine-right monarch. After the turbulence of the Fronde, the acceleration of the earlier trend toward a centralized government was accepted by the vast majority of the people as a very desirable step, conducive to law, order, and personal


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security. In New France the immediate benefits conferred by the crown were so great that no one could envisage a better system. When abuses crept in, those who suffered looked to the crown for redress, and this was accorded in enough instances that no one thought of looking elsewhere. The king delegated authority to his ministers, reserving for himself supervision over foreign affairs. Colbert was, to a much greater extent than the other ministers, given a free hand; only major decisions were referred to the king and then only to give the minister's decision the added weight of the monarch's support. Thus the government of New France resided in the cabinet of the minister of marine, assisted by his commis, akin to deputy ministers in the present-day parliamentary system. It was the minister who made policy, on the expert advice of these commis and the senior administrators in the colony. Of these last, the governor general enjoyed the highest status, and in the final resort exercised the greatest power. The position of this official was rather anomalous. He was not a viceroy yet he represented the king. No visible check to the power of the throne could be allowed, particularly after the experience of the Fronde and the example of recent events in England. Unlike the provinces in France, where the powers of the local governors had been reduced to almost nothing, New France, owing to its remoteness from the metropolis, had to have a governor who could exercise the royal power in times of crisis and symbolize it always. It is a commonly held assumption that a major weakness of this autocratic, highly centralized administrative system was that the governor and intendant frequently were unable to use their initiative when swift action was needed because all decisions had to be referred to the minister, which meant that at least a year would elapse before action could be taken. In fact, the local officials were expected to use their own initiative on such occasions, and they did. They had much more latitude to act than did the officials of the provinces of France and precisely because the situation demanded it. In 1713 Governor Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil stated in a dispatch to the minister that Michel Bégon, the newly appointed intendant who previously had been intendant at Rochefort, "has a lot to learn about many things here, in time he will come to understand that there is a great difference between Rochefort and Quebec; at Rochefort one receives your orders every week and here only annually, which means that often something is begun and finished before we have had the time to inform you about it." 6 The greatest strength of the Canadian administrative system was the swiftness with which the governor and intendant could mobilize the entire resources of the colony. In time of war this gave the French a great advantage over the English colonies and explains in no small measure why they were able more than to hold their own against them for so long.7 Yet this same remoteness from the direct supervision of the crown made it


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necessary to prevent the governor from abusing the authority delegated to him by the king. The concept of checks and balances was as yet unknown and would have been instantly rejected as unworkable and positively dangerous; but the problem was a very vexing one, made more so by the fact that the nature of the governor general's position necessitated the appointment of a senior officer who by definition had to be a member of the noblesse d'épée And it was this class that had recently challenged the power of the throne, albeit unsuccessfully, in the uprising of the Fronde, but not before reducing the kingdom to chaos and opening it to invasion by foreign armies. It is frequently said that the French, unlike the pragmatic Anglo-Saxons, proceed from theory to practice. In the government of New France, however, a viable administrative system was arrived at by the pragmatic method. One of its chief agents was the office of intendant. A great deal has been written on the origins of this office. 8 Suffice it to say that by 1660 the intendants had become one of the vital elements of the central government. The office had become powerful because it had proved its worth. It was not venal, and it was eagerly sought after by the burgeoning noblesse de robe; thus only officials of proven ability acceded, and their retention of office was at the king's pleasure. Any intendant who proved to be incompetent, dishonest, or disloyal could expect to be dismissed from the royal service, his own career finished, and his sons' careers jeopardized. Given the presence in a colony as remote as was New France of a governor general who was a member of the old nobility and a senior military officer accustomed to exercising arbitrary authority, to giving orders and having them carried out without question; and of the intendant, a career man of the noblesse de robe which was despised by the feudal nobility whose power was in decline; with their respective spheres of authority ill defined, it would have required men of great tolerance and wisdom to avoid conflicts. Since such men were in as short supply then as now, during the first quarter century of royal government the administration of the colony was disrupted on occasion by disputes between these senior officials. Consequently, the minister of marine and the king were obliged to define the powers and responsibilities of these officials more closely, and this resulted in the powers of the governor general being stringently restricted. In this way New France, like other countries, developed a form of constitutional government. It was not the environmentthat is, frontier conditionswhich brought this about. The changes that were made resulted from the minister's reaction to conflicts in the colony, which in turn arose out of social stresses that had originated in France rather than in Canada.9 Similarly, safeguards had to be enacted to protect the individual against the arbitrary acts of officialdom. Colbert, in a dispatch to the governor general in 1674, made it plain that the right of the people to move freely in the colony and to attend to their own affairs without interference was not to


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be transgressed. Some of the senior officials, however, held the view that their private interests were synonymous with those of the crown; hence to oppose them was akin to treason. The king quickly disabused them of that notion. When it was brought to his attention that the governor of Montreal was behaving in a despotic manner, imprisoning people who refused to submit to his arbitrary demands, he issued an ordonnance forbidding the colonial governors to imprison anyone without immediately charging him and bringing him to trial before the courts. Only in cases of treason or sedition, which Colbert pointedly remarked ''hardly ever happen," could the governors take the law into their own hands. 10 This royal ordonnance was enacted in 1679, the same year Parliament in England passed a measure to serve the same purpose, the act known as habeas corpus. Despite these limitations on his power, the governor general retained his authority in military affairs and in negotiations with the Indian nations. He also retained the right to exercise the royal authority and countermand the orders of any of the other officials, but he could only do this when he was convinced that he would be held accountable by the minister were he not to do so. When he did, he had to be able to justify his actions to the king or expect to be severely reprimanded, if not dismissed from his post. The early governors and intendants were continually instructed by the minister that they had to cooperate in all things, and the governor general in particular was ordered that only in the most extraordinary circumstances could he interfere with the work of the other officials, particularly of the officers of law. After one governor general, the Comte de Frontenac, the governor of Montreal, François-Marie Perrot, and two intendants, Jacques Duchesneau and Jacques de Meulles had been summarily dismissed from office for their failure to heed these instructions, the colonial administration functioned with relative tranquillity. It was the intendant, however, who was responsible for the general administration of the colony, the administration of justice, and the disbursement of the colony's finances. As the population increased, deputy intendants answerable to the intendant at Quebec had to be appointed at Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Detroit. Beneath them were a host of lesser officials who superintended roads, harbors, shipping, and municipal affairs, most of them were necessary, some were not. A few sinecure posts were created to provide pensions for men who had given long service to the crown and in their declining years lacked the means to live honorably. The towns of Montreal and Trois-Rivières also had local governors and town majors who were answerable to the governor general, but their functions were chiefly military. It was accepted as axiomatic that the function of the governmentthat is, the crownwas to govern, to maintain law and order, and to protect the proper interests of all segments of society. The concept that society consists of free and equal individuals was not given credence, since it was clearly


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not in accord with the facts. It seemed obvious that in a civilized society no man is completely free, that every man must relinquish a degree of freedom of action for the common good, and that all men are not equal. It also appeared obvious that society consisted of groups of individuals having common interests, functions, duties, responsibilities, rights, and privileges. Thus, the function of the crown was to ensure that each group in society performed its proper function, discharged its responsibilities, and was maintained in the enjoyment of its timehonored privileges. The concept that if every individual pursued his private advantage to the best of his ability the general good would somehow result, would have been rejected. This meant that in economic affairs it was taken for granted that the best interests of the consumer, that is, society as a whole, and not those of the individual producer, must prevail. Therefore no merchant, habitant, or artisan was permitted to charge all that the traffic would bear. At the same time it was recognized that merchants and artisans perform their functions best when allowed the maximum of freedom, but human frailty being what it is, the government was expected to intervene to maintain quality, fair prices, good measure, and also proper reward to the producer or merchant for his goods or services. This concept of an organic society obliged the intendant to issue a great number of ordonnances regulating the economic life of the colony. The weights and measures of the shopkeepers had to be inspected regularly; the quality and weight of the bakers' bread had to be checked; and the number of tradesmen allowed to keep shop had to be regulated so that they could gain a proper living and the needs of the people could be met. When, for example, it was suggested that there were not enough butchers in one of the towns, an assembly was held to discover the views of the people and to decide whether another butcher should be allowed to function. In times of shortage the intendant had to allocate supplies and regulate prices. All of these regulations were regarded as necessary, and had the royal officials not enacted them the people would have complained. Many, if not most, of the intendant's ordonnances were enacted in response to complaints or requests from the people. Undoubtedly some of the people chafed under these restrictions much of the time, but the intendant's ordonnances were not regarded as the dictates of a despotic government interfering with the freedom of the individual, but as necessary measures to prevent, curb, or remove abuses. 11 In the country districts a uniquely Canadian official emerged early in the royal regime and quickly became indispensable. This was the capitaine de milice. In 1669 Governor Rémy de Courcelles had received orders from the king to organize the Canadian settlers into militia companies and to see to it that they received military training.12 Companies of militia, each with a captain in command and subordinate officers, were established in both the towns and the country parishes, and proved their worth in all the colony's


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wars. These captains of militia were appointed by the governor general and of necessity had to be men respected by the habitants of their respective parishes, but their main function in peacetime was to act as sub-delegates of the intendant and as local police officers. They served as the vital link between the administration and the people, making the desires or complaints of the people known to the officials, who were usually responsive. In this ingenious way the seigneurs were prevented from becoming too powerful; they were neatly bypassed in the chain of authority, and when certain of the seigneurs attempted to have the militia captains made subordinate to them, the minister immediately instructed the governor to order them to desist. Like the English justice of the peace, the militia captain received no pay or emoluments; the prestige and status of the office sufficed. As in England, where the administration could not have functioned effectively without the justice of the peace, so in New France the office of capitaine de milice was an essential cog in the administrative machinery. Prior to 1663 there had been a Council at Quebec, presided over by the governor, which had enacted legislation. Colbert reorganized it, making it the Sovereign Council for the colony. It was now made up of the governor, the bishop, the intendant, an attorney general, a recording clerk and five councilors. The number of these last was soon found to be insufficient and in 1675 two more were added; then in 1703 their number was raised to twelve. In 1675 their power and prestige was considerably enhanced by their being given royal commissions to serve during the king's pleasure. Previously they had been appointed and dismissed at will by the governor and bishop jointly, which had led to serious disputes and abuses. The king further restricted the power of the governor by decreeing that the intendant would preside over the meetings of the Council. This body thus became sovereign in fact as well as in name. In France the concept of separation of powers was not in vogue. It was thought that those best qualified to judge in law were those who had enacted it; therefore the Sovereign Council had both judicial and legislative powers. It registered and promulgated the laws as they were enacted by the king, legislated to meet the needs of the colony, and heard some cases in first instance for the district of Quebec and criminal cases on appeal for the entire colony. Over the years, as the amount of litigation increased, the Council restricted itself increasingly to its judicial function, leaving legislation to be enacted by the intendant. Beneath the Sovereign Council were the lower courts in Quebec, Montreal, and Trois-Rivières. The judges of these courts were responsible for enacting a good deal of municipal legislation, governing such things as street traffic, road maintenance, garbage disposal, and fire regulations. In the countryside some of the more populous seigneuries had seigneurial courts, but these appear to have been few in number and heard only minor civil disputes. All of these courts were governed by the Coutume de Paris


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and by the body of customary law enacted in the colony. A thorough study of the administration of justice in New France has yet to be made, but it appears that it compares quite favorably with the systems in vogue in both France and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Close examination of a few criminal cases gives reason to doubt that the highly regarded Anglo-Saxon adversary system was superior to the inquisitorial system employed in New France. Unlike in England, the death penalty was rarely invoked and only for serious crimes. All told only sixty-seven persons were executed under the French regime. Although torture could be used to obtain evidence, its use was restricted to persons accused of crimes meriting the death penalty and whose guilt was manifest. In all, under the royal regime, the question extraordinaire was employed nineteen times, and as a consequence in four cases the accused, who would otherwise have been hanged, was acquitted, and in five cases the punishment was reduced. 13 Imprisonment for debt appears not to have been in vogue; the absence of this quaint practice was probably due to the fact that under French law the person committing a debtor to jail had to furnish him with adequate food; if he failed to do so, the debtor had to be freed and could not be reimprisoned for the same debt.14 Another factor may well have had some bearing on the matter; no one could have survived long in a Canadian prison, particularly in winter.15 One vexing problem that the Sovereign Council had to face shortly after its establishment was whether or not Indians in the colony were subject to French law. The whole question of French relations with the Indians was here shown in clear relief; for if the Indians who committed what were crimes under French law could be held accountable to the officers of that law, it could be said that the French were truly sovereign. If they could not, if the Indians considered themselves as subject only to their own rudimentary laws for crimes committed against French subjects, then clearly they were free, independent, and sovereign in their own right within the confines of the French colony; and this could only mean that New France, in effect, had divided sovereignty, French and Indian. In 1664 the Attorney General of the Sovereign Council found himself faced with this knotty problem. In March of that year an Algonkin Indian, most likely drunk, had raped the wife of an habitant of the Île d'Orléans. He was arrested and charged with the crime but escaped before his trial was completed. The attorney general then asked the Sovereign Council to determine not only whether or not this case should be pursued further, but also for guidance in all such cases involving Indians: whether, in fact, the Indians could be regarded as subject to French law. The Sovereign Council, like today's academics faced with a tricky problem, responded by appointing a committee to study the question and report back. This committee was composed of the Jesuit fathers in charge of the nearby mission Indians and a number of habitants. Their advice appears to have been to discuss the issue


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with the chiefs of all the nearby tribes, since the Indians could not be expected to be conversant with French law in such cases. On April 21 the Sovereign Council, with the governor general and the bishop in attendance, met with the chiefs of six tribes from the environs of the colony and explained to them that the Algonkin accused of the crime in question, under French law, would have been sentenced to be hanged if found guilty. The Indian spokesman, Noel Tek8erimat,* chief of the Algonkin of Quebec, proudly replied that they had maintained friendly relations with the French for a number of years, and if the behavior of their young braves had given grounds for complaint on occasion, so too had that of some Frenchmen while among the Indians. He declared that they were not aware that the death penalty could be imposed for rape, only for murder; therefore in this case it must not be invoked. In the future, however, they would accept this law. The chief then profited from the occasion to demand that certain abuses suffered by his tribe at the hands of the French, namely the seizure of an Indian debtor's goods by French creditors when hunting was poor, be stopped so that the French and Indians could continue to live in amity. The Council agreed to see that justice was done in these matters in the light of each particular case. 16 The Indians had thereby agreed to accept French law governing cases of rape when an Indian was the accused and a French subject the plaintiff; but that was all. Fifty years later the principal issue was still not resolved in favor of the French. In 1714 the governor and intendant asked the crown for a ruling, since Indians who became drunk in the colony or caused damage or bodily injury and were put in jail for breach of the peace declared that no one had the right to imprison them without their consent and that they were not subject to the laws of the colony. The King's reply was, "the matter is extremely delicate"; that the colonial authorities must begin by striving to accustom the Indians to submit to military justice and gradually bring them to accept the laws that govern the French.17 The Indians still regarded themselves as individually free and collectively sovereign. Eventually the French had to admit defeat. They evaded the basic principle involved by tacitly granting the Indians in the colony something akin to diplomatic immunity. The Indians claimed that no one was accountable for his actions while drunk; the liquor not the imbiber was responsible. The French had to accept this concept, and when a crime was committed by an intoxicated Indian, the French subject who had provided the liquor to excess was prosecuted for breaking the king's Ordonnance of May 24, 1679. If found guilty the accused also had to pay damages to the victim of the crime, or to his or her heirs, parents, or legal guardians.18 The French were unable to impose their law on the Indians, and for one good reason; to have

*The symbol 8 was sometimes used by the Canadians as an abbreviation for the sound ou.


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attempted to do so with any degree of vigor would have alienated the Indians, and this the French could not afford to do. Much of the credit for the seeming equity and efficacy of the Canadian judicial system must be given to Colbert and Louis XIV. They were painfully aware of the gross abuses rampant in the courts of law in France, but the vested interest of the legal fraternity was too powerful to allow effective reforms. In New France this did not obtain, and sweeping departures from custom were made at the outset. One of the most effective of these reforms was Colbert's refusal to allow any lawyers to practise in the colony. The drawing up of contracts and work of that sort was done by notaries, who also received copies of the intendant's ordonnances and promulgated them; but in court every man pleaded his own case, and the judges interrogated both litigants and witnesses under oath, then rendered their verdict. Another reform was the tariff of legal fees, strictly regulating all fees that a legal officer, from a lowly clerk or bailiff to a royal judge, could charge for every conceivable service. 19 This scale of fees was surprisingly low, and it was rigidly enforced. Moreover, in cases heard by the Sovereign Council there were no fees at all. All disputes between a seigneur and his censitaires were settled by the intendant, and the intendant could hear, without costs or fees, petty civil suits involving less than 100 livres. In more serious civil suits, if both parties agreed, the intendant could adjudicate again without charges of any kind, but without the right of appeal. In 1706, the intendant stated that he had adjudicated over 2000 such cases without costs. It would, of course, be too much to expect that abuses did not creep in, or that there were never miscarriages of justice. Some of the intendants upon first assuming office declared that the administration of justice was in a shocking state, but always added that they had been quick to rectify matters. Certainly the intention of the king and his senior officials was that justice must be swift, impartial, and available to all. It paid, however, to be a' member of the establishment. The records of the Sovereign Council indicate that on occasion the court was more lenient with members of their own class, bearers of "un beau nom" (a good name), than with accused from the lower orders. This may be why, in 1712, Louis XIV instructed the governor and intendant at Quebec: "Justice must be rendered alike to rich and poor, strong and weak, to the habitant as to the seigneur";20 and in 1717 a royal edict declared that poverty must never bar a subject from seeking justice in the courts.21 There is good reason to believe that it rarely did. Again, there is no evidence whatsoever that the departures made from legal practices in France were brought about by the influence of the frontier. They represented reforms imposed by the central government and reflected the humanitarian attitude of Louis XIV and his ministers.22 Further evidence of this last is to be found in the swift action taken by the


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minister upon the receipt of petitions from the humblest of the king's subjects, and in the granting of half pay to ordinary soldiers serving in the colony who were discharged on grounds of age and enfeeblement. All of this was only one aspect of the general attitude of the king. Louis and his ministers firmly believed that they were required to govern in the interests of all the king's subjects, rich and poor alike; that the time-honored rights and privileges of each subject and social group had to be protected by the crown. 23 Unlike in England and its colonies, property was not sacred; it was human rights, not property rights, that were paramount. Here again, the frontier environment had no influence whatsoever. These were values imported from the mother country. For a few years after the inauguration of the royal regime, the existing element of representative government, the office of syndics, was retained. Colbert, however, was very suspicious of any such device and gave orders to suppress it quietly, "it being a good thing that each man speak for himself and that no one speaks for all."24 This was not as retrograde a step as it might seem today. The capitaines de milice were able to perform the function of the syndics more effectively, and one of the intendant's principal duties was to discover the needs of the people and seek to aid them in every way.25 That both the intendants and the governors took this seriously is made manifest by the institution of public assemblies to discover the views of the people on specific issues before important legislation was enacted. Such assemblies eventually came to be annual events, held at Quebec when the ships arrived from France, that being the occasion for large numbers of residents throughout the colony to come to the main town. These meetings resembled a latter-day university faculty meeting chaired by a strong-minded dean more than they did a New England town meeting. The governor and intendant determined the agenda and delegated someone to act as rapporteur to explain the issues to be discussed. All in attendance were free to speak their minds on the questions before the assembly, and the governor and intendant gave their views last to avoid inhibiting the meeting. When all had had their say, the intendant "collected the voices," that is asked each person in turn to give his opinion, then, guided by the consensus, he gave his decision. The rapporteur then drew up minutes of the meeting which were signed by him, the governor, the intendant, and five members of the assembly, two from Quebec, two from Montreal, and one from Trois-Rivières. In this way the ordinary people did have some say in the administration of their affairs and were required to accept a degree of responsibility for the legislation enacted. Significantly, when in 1706 Louis XIV was informed that this was the practice, he gave instructions that it should be formalized and the procedure drawn up in judicial form to ensure that future assemblies would be held in the proper manner.26 And in 1710 Vaudreuil and the intendant Raudot were ordered


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by the king to convene a colonial council to determine what measures should be taken for the security of the colony; a report had to be drawn up and its recommendations strictly adhered to, with a copy going to the king. 27 The principle of consultative government was further extended in 1708 when the merchants of Quebec, and in 1717 those of Montreal, were permitted to establish chambers of commerce to concert together and to nominate, in each town, one of their number to make representations to the governor and intendant on measures they considered would assist them in the conduct of their business affairs. In the country parishes, too, the habitants held frequent assemblies to decide local matters, usually, if not as a rule, at the behest of the intendant or his deputy.28 But the people at large were not permitted, under any circumstances, to call assemblies on their own to discuss public issues. They could make their views known to the capitaine de milice who would pass the information on to the intendant. It then rested with him to decide what action to take. Although every subject had the right to present a petition to the king, and some at least had their requests granted, the circulation of petititons to gather signatures was strictly forbidden. Such petitions, and unsanctioned public meetings, were regarded as seditious. What is particularly significant about the type of assemblies that were held is the fact that the institution was imposed from above, as a means to aid the royal officials in their administration of the colony. There is no evidence of "frontier democracy" at work here. Given that there was adequate consultation between governors and governed, it is not surprising that the Canadians failed to manifest the Anglo-Saxon proclivity to exercise control over those who enacted legislation. There were, however, additional reasons why this tendency was markedly lacking; the main one being that no direct taxes were levied in the colony. With the exception of very occasional taxes levied for special purposes and after discussion in an assembly,29 the only taxes the Canadians paid were the quart, a 25 percent export tax on all beaver pelts they sold to the agent of the company which had the marketing monopoly, a similar 10 percent on moose hides (both these taxes were removed in 1717), and a 10 percent import tax on wines and liquor. In 1714, when the French Government was extremely hard pressed financially, the minister suggested imposing a tax on the Canadians to defray the administrative costs of the colony. The governor and intendant strongly opposed the suggestion, claiming that the habitants had suffered great hardship during the war just ended, that they were the first line of defense against the English to the south and it would not do to make them discontented.30 That ended it. In comparison with the lower classes in France the Canadians were very well off indeed, particularly in the years after 1714, but no governor or intendant in his right mind would have supported the imposition of taxes; to have done so would have made his task


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more difficult. No tax, no trouble; and no administrator in his right mind asks for trouble; it was as simple as that. It might be argued that the authorities feared that any such measures would cause an exodus to the west, or to the English colonies. This was highly unlikely; the number that could hope to survive in the west was limited by the economics of the fur trade, and as for desertion to the English colonies, language and religion were major barriers. Indeed, it would appear likely that a greater number from the English colonies settled permanently in New France than went the other way. 31 On the whole the institutions imposed on the colony by the crown worked well. This was largely because the senior officials sent from France were, with a few notable exceptions, experienced, competent, and relatively honest. It is extremely doubtful that the colony could have provided from among its own population a steady succession of administrators of this caliber. In fact, a recurrent problem in the colony was to find men with the necessary education and capacity to perform administrative and judicial functions competently. There is no evidence that the colonials had any serious complaint against the system or desired any radical changes. In the final analysis, as with any system of government, everything depended on the competence of the senior administrators, particularly the governor and intendant. When these officials abused their authority, the only recourse the people had was to complain to the minister, which they did on occasion most vociferously; if his orders to desist were not obeyed and the complaints continued, the officials were eventually recalled. Meanwhile, the people had to submit. It was, in short, military government; but interposed between these officials and the people, acting as a buffer and a check on despotic rule, were the courts of law, particularly the Sovereign Council, made up of local notables who took their duties very seriously. On the whole, the administrative institutions of New France served the needs of the people tolerably well.


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5 Society and the Frontier Of the more tangible factors that influenced Canadian society there can be no doubt that geography was very important. The St. Lawrence River and certain of its tributaries dominated life in the colony. The land suitable for agricultural settlement stretched in a narrow band along the St. Lawrence, wider on the south shore than on the north. Near Quebec the Laurentian Shield, scraped nearly bare long ago by an advancing ice age, meets the river. Below this point only small pockets of land at river mouths were suitable for agriculture. Above Quebec, on the north shore, the Shield draws away from the river to a distance of some forty miles at Montreal. On the south shore the belt of fertile land is quite wide between Quebec and Montreal but becomes a narrow ribbon along the river toward Gaspé. West of Montreal there is also good land but on both the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, rapids make communications difficult. Consequently throughout the French regime land settlement was concentrated in the St. Lawrence Valley from a point a few miles west of Montreal to a little below Quebec, with pockets of settlement on both sides lower down the river. Prior to 1663 the number of settlers and the amount of land cleared


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Section of Gédéon de Catalogne's map of the settlements on the St. Lawrence, 1709. The radial-spoked concessions, top center, were an attempt by the French government to have the settlers concentrated at the hubs in villages, rather than dispersed, each family on its own strip of land. The scheme met with very little success and was quickly abandoned. (Public Archives of Canada)


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grew very slowly. In 1634 the first seigneurial grant was made to Robert Giffard by Richelieu's Company of New France. During the ensuing thirty years some seventy other seigneuries were granted The company sent a few settlers to the colony but in the main let this responsibility fall to the seigneurs who, for the most part, lacked the means to engage in a large-scale immigration program. The religious orders did bring out a goodly number of servants, laborers, and settlers; and the crown from time to time sent detachments of soldiers to aid in the colony's defense. By these means the population slowly grew, and stretches of forest near the three areas of settlement, Quebec, Trois-Rivières, and Montreal, were cleared back from the shores of the river. In 1640 the total French population in the colonysettlers, soldiers, clergy, fur trade company employeesnumbered only about 240; by 1663, largely as a result of the efforts of the religious orders, this number had increased to some 2500. After the latter date, under the stimulus of the crown, settlement increased very rapidly; by 1669 the population had increased by two thirds, and by the end of the century it was at approximately the 15,000 mark, doubling thereafter each generation to a total of some 70,000 at the Conquest. 1 The St. Lawrence dictated the pattern of settlement in another way. It was the main means of communication in the colony, in summer by canoe or sailing barque, in winter by sleigh on the ice. The need for roads was thus obviated until the eighteenth century. Every settler desired land on the river, and the land holdings early took on the peculiar pattern that has endured to the present day, that of narrow strips running back from the river. Survey lines separating seigneuries ran at right angles to the river and as the generations succeeded each other the individual holdings became increasingly narrow. According to the law of the land, the Coutume de Paris, a seigneur's eldest son inherited the manor house and half the domain land; the rest was divided among the remaining children. The children of the humbler settlers, the censitaires, inherited equal parts of the parental land. After a few generations many of the individual holdings became too narrow to be worked efficiently, and in 1745 the intendant forbade anyone to build a house or barn on land narrower than one and a half arpents (approximately 100 yards) by thirty or forty linear arpents in depth. Those who contravened the ordonnance were fined 100 livres and their buildings were torn down at their expense. By the eighteenth century the pattern was well established. Along both banks of the St. Lawrence from Quebec to Montreal the farms stretched back from the river, the houses and barns on the river bank spaced a few hundred yards apart. Every few miles there was a seigneurial manor house and a mill, and eventually a steep-roofed stone church. Later in the century concessions were taken up in the second range and another row of narrow strip farms stretched back from the rear of the first, with a roadway between the two. To anyone traveling by river up to Montreal nearly all of New France passed in review.


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This pattern of land settlement was not without its disadvantages. Until the end of the seventeenth century the Iroquois were an almost constant menace, and with the homes spaced in this fashion mutual aid in times of attack was almost impossible. Individual farms and their occupants could be destroyed all too easily before aid could be mustered. While the Iroquois assaults were at their height stockaded forts had to be built in the exposed seigneuries where the people could take refuge with their livestock, abandoning their homes to the depredations of the enemy. Attempts by some of the royal officials to have the settlers live in villages with their concessions radiating out like spokes of a wheel, were not very successful. The Canadians insisted on having river frontage and living apart, lords of their own little domains, with access to the wider world beyond by way of the river. By the mid-eighteenth century the farm houses in the first range and the churches, were nearly all of stone, thickwalled, substantial; steep Norman roofs were modified by a graceful curving wide eave, to afford shade in the hot Canadian summers. Peter Kahn, a Swedish professor of natural history who visited Canada in 1749, going by boat from Montreal to Quebec remarked: The country on both sides was very delightful to-day, and the fine state of its cultivation added to the beauty of the scene. It could really be called a village, beginning at Montreal and ending at Quebec, which is a distance of more than one hundred and eighty miles, for the farmhouses are never above five arpents and sometimes but three apart, a few places excepted. The prospect is exceedingly beautiful when the river flows on for several miles in a straight line, because it then shortens the distance between the houses, and makes them form one continued village. . . . We sometimes saw windmills near the farms. They were generally built of stone, with a roof of boards, which together with its wings could be turned to the wind. 2 The principal crop grown was wheat but the climate of the St. Lawrence Valley was not particularly suitable for this cereal. Heavy rains sometimes caused serious loss from smut; early frosts were a constant menace; and plagues of caterpillars occasionally destroyed everything growing. Yet crop failures appear to have been no more frequent than in France, where they were anticipated, on an average, once in five years.3 In the early years the yield was high, the natural result of rich virgin soil. By the mid-eighteenth century it had declined considerably, despite the increase in the number of cattle and the consequent increased use of manure. Peter Kalm was very critical of the inefficient agricultural methods he had observed in the English colonies. He was not less critical of those in New France; they both compared unfavorably with farming methods that he had studied in England, which he stated were the most advanced in Europe. One factor that militated against efficient agricultural production, in New France as in the English colonies, was the chronic shortage of labor. When ablebodied men could obtain land very cheaply, they were not


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inclined to work for others, except at excessively high wages. The wages paid skilled tradesmen were also high, resulting in a drift from the country to the three towns, which contained 25 percent of the colonial population. A much more important factor, however, was the large number of men, of necessity the young and physically fit, who were continually out of the colony on voyages to the west. All the evidence indicates that the Canadian habitants and the laboring class in the towns enjoyed a higher standard of living and much more personal freedom than did their counterparts in Europe. This undoubtedly accounts, to some degree, for the difference in their attitudes and character that visitors from Europe all remarked on. But what seems to have had an even greater influence was their frequent contact, on terms of equality, with the Indian nations. Nor did they have to voyage far for this contact. Within the confines of the colony, or close by, were several resident Indian bands. Near Quebec, at Lorette, resided a band of Huron, survivors of the 1649 diaspora. A few miles south of Quebec was the Abenaki village of St. François, removed from Acadia to protect the colony's southern approaches from Anglo-American incursions up the Connecticut River. Near Montreal were two Indian settlements: the Mission Iroquois at Sault St. Louis and the Sulpician mission that had first been established on the lower slopes of Mount Royal, then, as the town grew, had been moved first to the north side of the island, later to the western tip, and finally across the Lake of Two Mountains to Oka. The Mission Iroquois at Sault St. Louis (Caugnawaga to the Iroquois) were originally Mohawks who had been converted to Christianity by the Jesuits and had then removed to New France the better to preserve their new faith. 4 Members of other of the Iroquois nations, after conversion, subsequently moved to Caugnawaga to spare themselves the constant taunts of their fellow tribesmen who had remained pagan. Another reason for this Iroquois defection to Canada was the desire to avoid the Albany rum traders. Not all the Indians were incapable of resisting the temporary delights that intoxication brought; the authorities of both New France and New York were frequently asked by the chiefs of Iroquois and Algonkin nations to keep liquor away from their villages. The governors of New France, for the most part, did their best to comply and managed to curb the abuse to a considerable degree. The same could not be said of the authorities at Albany. There, rum and whiskey of such appalling quality that it was little better than poison was the main item of trade, used to get the Indians drunk before they traded their furs and then defraud them. This practice was so common that the Dutch traders at Albany were little more than Canada's secret weapon, for although many of the western Indians would bypass the French posts to go to Albany where they were given all the liquor they could drink,5 they were not so besotted that they did not later realize the consequences. This is not to say that there were no Canadian traders willing to use liquor in the same way in their commercial


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dealings with the Indians. The Jesuit missionaries at Sault St. Louis waged a constant struggle to keep such traders away from their charges, and the Oka mission had removed to this site largely to keep the converts away from the taverns and unscrupulous purveyors. The members of this latter mission were a mixture of Iroquois and northern Algonkin; the common factor was their conversion to Christianity. During the colonial wars these warriors, particularly those of Sault St. Louis, performed valiant service; indeed, the authorities at Albany were greatly concerned lest most of the Five Nations should remove to Canada. Had this occurred Albany and all the northern settlements would have had to be abandoned. Although in expeditions against the villages of the Five Nations the Mission Iroquois could not be depended onthey frequently gave their kinsmen warningthe devastating raids on the settlements of New England were carried out by war parties composed largely of these domiciled tribesmen, combined with Canadian militia, and led by officers in the colonial regulars, the Troupes de la Marine. Thus the Canadians were closely associated with the Indians, waging war after their fashion, using their techniques and becoming as adept in the harsh, cruel methods as any Iroquois or Abenaki. There was therefore a demonstrable degree of truth in the opinion of the Canadians expressed by one French officer: ''They make war only by swift attacks and almost always with success against the English who are not as vigorous nor as adroit in the use of fire arms as they, nor as practiced in forest warfare." 6 In peacetime, too, the Canadians were in constant association with the Indians. The Indians were frequent visitors to Montreal, and to prevent constant blood baths, the intendant had to set aside certain taverns for the Indian trade, allocated by nation, and strictly regulated. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the Canadians early adopted much of the Indian way of life and became imbued with some of their character traits. Native foods such as corn, squash, and pumpkins found ready acceptance. Indian means of travelthe snowshoe, toboggan, and canoewere quickly mastered. Many of the Canadians, who were inveterate pipe smokers, preferred to mix their locally grown tobacco with the inner bark of the cherry or dogwood tree, a custom borrowed from the Indians. In their mode of dress the habitants copied the Indians, with an effect rather startling to European eyes. The women, except when dressed up fine for Sunday mass, wore a short jacket or blouse and a short skirt which, Peter Kalm several times observed "does not reach to the middle of their legs." It was during their frequent trips to the west that the Canadians were most exposed to the Indian way of life. By the end of the century the population was estimated to be 15,000. There was then a serious imbalance in the sexes; thus, many men could not get a wife, so essential for working a viable farm. This made the appeal of trading expeditions greater; hence some two or three hundred men were always off in the west. It was during these years that senior


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officials, newly arrived from France, began to comment on the striking difference between the Canadians and their peers in France. Inevitably, these officials were first struck by what seemed to them the deleterious social and economic effects of the metamorphosis. The Marquis de Denonville, governor general from 1685 to 1689, was appalled by certain attitudes and habits of the Canadians. Instead of laboring on the land, they preferred to spend their lives in the bush, trading with the Indians, where their parents, the curés, and the officials could not govern them, and where they lived like savages. Even when they returned to the colony these youths showed a shocking proclivity for going about half naked in the hot weather, as did the Indians. "I cannot emphasize enough, my lord, the attraction that this Indian way of life has for all these youths," Denonville wrote to the minister. But he then went on to say, "The Canadians are all big, well built, and firmly planted on their legs, accustomed when necessary to live on little, robust and vigorous, very self willed and inclined to dissoluteness; but they are witty and vivacious." 7 The intendant Jean Bochart de Champigny in 1691 wrote in much the same vein, stating, "It is most unfortunate that Canadian youths, who are vigorous and tough, have no inclination for anything but these voyages where they live in the forest like Indians for two or three years at a time, without benefit of any of the sacraments."8 Peter Kalm in 1749 was also much impressed by the martial qualities of the Canadians, acquired through their frequent sojourns in the west. He noted that they were exceptional marksmen: "I have seldom seen any people shoot with such dexterity as these. . . . There was scarcely one of them who was not a clever marksman and who did not own a rifle." He then went on: It is inconceivable what hardships the people of Canada must undergo on their hunting journeys. Sometimes they must carry their goods a great way by land. Frequently they are abused by the Indians, and sometimes they are killed by them. They often suffer hunger, thirst, heat, and cold, and are bitten by gnats, and exposed to the bites of snakes and other dangerous animals and insects. These (hunting expeditions) [sic] destroy a great part of the youth in Canada, and prevent the people from growing old. By this means, however, they become such brave soldiers, and so inured to fatigue that none of them fears danger or hardships. Many of them settle among the Indians far from Canada, marry Indian women, and never come back again.9 Some of the Jesuit missionaries in the west took a much more jaundiced view of the effects of the close relations between the Canadians and the Indians. Fathers St. Cosme and Carheil at Michilimackinac made that post appear, from their description, a veritable Sodom or Gomorrah, where the only occupations of the Canadians, apart from trading furs, were drinking, gambling, and lechery. Things had come to such a pass that the coureurs de bois took Indian women with them rather than men on their trading


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expeditions. The men claimed that these women worked for lower wages than men demanded, and were willing to perform such chores as cutting firewood and cooking. The missionaries refused to be persuaded that other fringe benefits were not involved. 10 The governor general Vaudreuil, although he did not support the Jesuit proposal to keep the Canadians and Indians as far apart as possible, was strongly opposed to mixed marriages. He claimed that the children of mixed blood incorporated the worst character traits of both races and were a constant source of trouble. He therefore issued orders forbidding such marriages at Detroit, the main French post in the west at that time (1709).11 These complaints on the part of the missionaries have to be taken with a pinch of salt. To them chastity, or failing this monogamy with the benefit of the marriage sacrament, was the ideal. They expected these voyageurs who, if married, had left their wives in the colony to live like monks while in the west. The Indians had different moral values and chastity was not among them. Father Charlevoix, who was not a missionary, took a more tolerant view of Canadian society in the 1740s. He commented: Our Creoles are accused of great avidity in amassing, and indeed they do things with this in view, which could hardly be believed if they were not seen. The journeys they undertake; the fatigues they undergo; the dangers to which they expose themselves, and the efforts they make surpass all imagination. There are, however, few less interested, who dissipate with greater facility what has cost them so much pains to acquire, or who testify less regret at having lost it. Thus there is some room to imagine that they commonly undertake such painful and dangerous journeys out of a taste they have contracted for them. They love to breathe a free air, they are early accustomed to a wandering life; it has charms for them, which make them forget past dangers and fatigues, and they place their glory in encountering them often. . . . I know not whether I ought to reckon amongst the defects of our Canadians the good opinion they entertain of themselves. It is at least certain that it inspires them with a confidence, which leads them to undertake and execute what would appear impossible to many others. . . . It is alleged they make bad servants, which is owing to their great haughtiness of spirit, and to their loving liberty too much to subject themselves willingly to servitude.12 These observations on the cupidity of the Canadians, coupled with their spendthrift attitude, are significant for these same traits were quite pronounced among the Indians. Like the Indian, the Canadian did not see any merit in storing up worldly goods; both looked down on those who did, and up to those who spent their money ostentiously on good living. The Canadians, too, became proud, independent, and improvident, glorying in their physical strength, their hardihood, and their contempt for danger, caring little for the morrow. One French officer commented, in 1757:

"They are not thrifty and take no care for the future, being too fond of their freedom and their independence. They want to be well thought of


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and they know how to make the most of themselves. They endure hunger and thirst patiently, many of them having been trained from infancy to imitate the Indians, whom, with reason, they hold in high regard. They strive to gain their esteem and to please them. Many of them speak their language, having passed part of their life amongst them at the trading posts." 13 It would seem an obvious conclusion that the Canadians had acquired this attitude from the Indians, and were able to do so because the necessities of life were relatively easily come by in Canada. In other words, this character trait was a product of relative affluence and the frontier environment. It was to no small degree the fact that the Canadians did come to share this attitude with the Indians that their individual relations with them were usually better than were those of the Anglo-Americans. Ruette D'Auteuil, the attorney general at Quebec, spoke the truth for his day when he claimed that, the price of trade goods being equal, the Indians preferred to have dealings with the French rather than with the English.14 This view was later corroborated by a British commentator who stated that, "the French have found some secret of conciliating the affections of the savages, which our traders seem stranger to, or at least take no care to put it in practice."15 Not only did the Canadians travel to the far west, they also voyaged northeastward, serving as crews on fishing boats in the Gulf and in the seal-and whale-hunting expeditions along the coast of Labrador. There, too, they came in frequent contact with Indians, and also with the Eskimo. In wartime they served on privateers, preying on shipping along the New England coast. French privateer captains frequently called at Quebec to take on crews, Canadians being very highly regarded for their toughness and bellicosity. Canadians in all sections of the colony were accustomed to make trips to distant parts of the continent and to live among peoples of an entirely different culture. The whole continent from Labrador and Hudson Bay to the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico was their world. Unlike their counterparts in Europe who rarely moved beyond the confines of their native parish, there was nothing parochial about them; they were men of broad horizons and a continental outlook able to accommodate themselves to almost any conditions anywhere. Were life to become too restrictive in the settlements along the St. Lawrence or were a wife to nag too constantly, some of them at least could hire out as voyageurs for the west or as crew on a voyage to Labrador, France, or the West Indies. Even those who never made such a trip could feel that the opportunity was there, and this must have given them a sense of freedom. They could not help but hear the tales of those who had voyaged far afield, of the strange peoples with stranger customs in these distant lands. They, too, shared the experience, vicariously. Royal officials in the eighteenth century, upon first arriving in the colony, were quick to remark that the Canadians had become a distinct


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people with values and manners markedly at variance with those of the same class in the mother country. Usually they were quite taken aback by the attitudes and way of life of the Canadians. Only after they had been in the colony for a few years did they come to appreciate the positive side of what had at first seemed a society and people sadly in need of discipline and reform. It was the free and easy, seemingly dissolute, ways of the Canadians, their independent attitude, their insistence on being led not driven, that irked the officials, both civil and military. Other observers were struck by their profligacy, their feast or famine attitude, their recklessness. A Sulpician priest upon arrival in the colony in 1737 remarked that the bulk of the peoplemilitary officers, merchants, artisans, and habitants alikewere "as poor as artists and as vain as peacocks" and spent every sou they had on ostentatious living. He was shaken to see country girls who tended cows during the week, on Sundays bedecked in lace and hoop skirts, wearing their hair in the very elaborate, high-piled style known then as à la Fontange. 16 Despite these shortcomings, all observers agreed that the Canadians were tough and hardy, gloried in feats of endurance that made Europeans blanch, could travel from one end of the continent to another while living off the land, and had no equal in forest warfare. It was also noted that these same men, when in their homes, were uncommonly courteous, with a natural air of gentility more usual among the nobility than the lower classes.17 In this respect they compared very favorably with their counterparts, the peasants of France and the settlers in the English colonies. Peter Kalm was particularly struck by this and in his journal he noted that: The inhabitant of Canada, even the ordinary man, surpasses in politeness by far those people who live in these English provinces. . . . On entering one of the peasant's houses, no matter where, and on beginning to talk with the men or women, one is quite amazed at the good breeding and courteous answers which are received, no matter what the question is. . . . Frenchmen who were born in Paris said themselves that one never finds in France among country people the courtesy and good breeding which one observes everywhere in this land. I heard many native Frenchmen assert this.18 It would, of course, be very easy to ascribe these peculiarities to the frontier environment of New France. There can be no doubt that the frontier had a good deal to do with this, but the changes that took place in Canadian society were very complex. It is therefore necessary to examine conditions in the colony closely to discover the various elements that differed from those of France and then decide which ones were occasioned by the frontier. Perhaps the basic factor was the abundance of free, fertile land, and the peculiar terms of land tenure under the seigneurial regime. This meant that the Canadian habitants were assured of as much land as they could cultivate, and they paid for it only very modest seigneurial dues, if they paid any at all, amounting to less than 10 percent of their annual income


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from the land. 19 Apart from this obligation, and the tithe for the church, fixed by royal decree at one twenty-sixth of the wheat grown, the habitants paid no other taxes. Labor service for the seigneurs, in the form of corvées, was very rarely imposed and was, in fact, a violation of the Coutume de Paris. In the few seigneuries where it was imposed it consisted of one day's labor in March or an exemption payment of two livres. Parish and royal corvées for work on the seigneurial common land, roads, bridges, or fortifications were a form of taxation but they usually amounted to not more than three or four days of labor a year, and the seigneur was supposed to do his share, under the supervision of the militia captain. Unlike the peasant in France who spent his life sweating, scrimping, cheating, and saving to put aside enough money to buy a small piece of land or to purchase exemption from manorial obligations, and who had to keep his little hoard well hidden, wearing rags, living in a hovel, giving every appearance of near starvation to prevent the tax collectors from seizing his savings, the Canadian could spend what he had earned without a care. He could buy land for his sons so as to have them near him and spare them the necessity of clearing virgin forest on a new seigneury, or he could spend his earnings on consumer goods and entertainment. Whereas the economics of the situation would tend to make the French peasant mean and grasping, the Canadian could afford to be openhanded, with little care for the morrow. In 1699 the intendant Jean Bochart de Champigny commented that for the most part the habitants lived well, enjoying the right to hunt and fish, privileges that were stringently denied their European counterparts. In that age wood and leather were vital commodities; the Canadians had ample supplies of both. Canadians who moved to France complained bitterly of the shortage and high cost of firewood, and declared that they suffered far more from the damp winter cold there than they ever had in Canada. In the eighteenth century the intendant Gilles Hocquart remarked that no one starved in Canada. Of few lands in Europe could this have been said. The normal consumption of meat was half a pound per person a day, and of white wheat bread, two French pounds a day. Moreover, the climate allowed the Canadians to keep plentiful supplies of meat, fish, and game frozen hard for use throughout the winter; but a mid-winter thaw that lasted too long could be calamitous. At the town markets fish were sold frozen and cut with a saw. Eels, taken at Quebec by the thousand, were a staple food; smoked or salted, they were described by Frontenac as the "habitants' manna." They were also a major export item to France, being considered far better than the European variety. Ice houses were common among the more well to do, making iced drinks and desserts available all summer, as well as enabling preservation of meat and game. The colored ices served by the French in hot weather were a source of wonderment to visiting Indians when entertained by the governor, and their effect on the decayed teeth of certain elderly chiefs was electric. The vitamin content of the Canadian diet, being much richer in


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protein, was considerably higher than that of the peasants and urban working class in France, who had to exist on coarse bread and vegetable stews with meat only on very rare occasions. 20 In Europe the bulk of the population went to bed hungry most nights. Such was rarely the case in Canada. Mme. Marie-Isabelle Bégon, widow of the governor of Trois-Rivières, who in 1749 moved from Montreal to the family estate near Rochefort querulously asked, "Where are those good partridges we left for the servants? I would gladly eat them now."21 It is not surprising that the fine physical stature of the Canadians occasioned frequent comment from persons recently come from France. In fact, the Canadians were better fed then than a sizable percentage of North Americans are today. The lack of external markets for all but furs kept the economy at a subsistence level. Some of the royal officials, charged with improving the colonial economy, declared that the men showed a marked distaste for hard work and that the unbridled vanity of their women folk kept them poor. In 1699 Champigny noted: "The men are all strong and vigorous but have no liking for work of any duration; the women love display and are excessively lazy."22 Denonville, thirteen years earlier, had also remarked that the indolence of the men and the desire of the women to live like gentle ladies kept the people poor and the colony's economy backward. Such comments have to be considered in context. The Canadian habitant could provide for his basic needs without too much effort, and he preferred to devote his extra time, not to produce an agricultural surplus to please the intendant or to add to his own store of worldly goods, but to the relaxed enjoyment of his leisure hours. He would grow enough flax or hemp to supply his own needs, but frequently declined to raise a surplus for export. Rather than raise more cattle, he raised horses; by the early eighteenth century all put the poorer families had a carriage and sleigh for social occasions, and every youth had his own horse, used not for the plow but for racing, or to pay calls on the neighborhood girls. During the War of the Spanish Succession the governor and intendant became concerned over this, claiming that in winter the men no longer used snowshoes because they always traveled by horse and sleigh. It was difficult, they stated, to find enough men who could use snowshoes when they were needed for war parties against New England. The question might well be asked; how many peasants in Europe owned horses and carriages, let alone used them for mere social purposes. The average horse cost forty livres (roughly $400.00 in today's money) and a good one a hundred livres or more,23 thus the Canadian habitants were relatively affluent, and this could not help but have influenced their social attitudes. Given these conditions it is hardly surprising that the Canadians were by no means as submissive or even respectful, on occasion, toward their social superiors as was thought fitting. As early as 1675 the members of the Sovereign Council were incensed by derogatory graffiti on walls in Quebec, and several years later the intendant had to threaten stern action against


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those who composed, distributed, or sang songs that he regarded as libelous and defamatory of certain prominent persons in the colony. This last, however, might be regarded as merely the continuance of an old French tradition that had flourished in the days of the Mazarinades. Thus, rather than the frontier environment, economic affluence and the French temperament were the more significant factors here. Much is made of the prevalence of lawlessness on the Anglo-American frontier. To a limited degree this was also true of New France, and it is significant that it was at Montreal, the fur trade and military base, the main point of contact between European and Indian cultures, more than at Quebec, that respect for law and order was sometimes lacking. In 1711 the governor and intendant had to establish a police force in Montreal, consisting of one lieutenant and three archers, to make the citizens keep the peace and to control drunken Indians. An educated soldier in the colonial troops, newly arrived in Canada, remarked that the citizens of Montreal called those of Quebec "sheep," and that the character of the latter was gentler and less proud. The Quebecers reciprocated by calling the men of Montreal "wolves," a label that the soldier thought apt since the Montrealers spent much of their time in the forest among the Indians. In 1754 an officer recommended that Quebec men be employed to transport supplies to the Ohio forts because they were much "gentler" and almost as vigorous as those from the Montreal area. Despite the frequent tavern brawls and duels, the incidence of crimes of violence was not great. But what is much more significant is that, given the nature of the populace, accustomed to the relatively unrestrained, wild, free life that the fur trade afforded, very rarely was there any overt resistance to authority. On the few occasions when the people protested openly and vigorously something done, or not done, the authorities were able to subdue them quickly without recourse to punitive measures. Most of these manifestationssome five in allwere occasioned by high prices charged for certain commodities, leading the people to believe that the merchants were profiteering and that the authorities were delinquent in not taking steps to stop them. The heaviest penalty inflicted on the leaders of these "seditious gatherings" appears to have been less than two months in jail. 24 The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the Canadian people had little to complain about, but when they did complain too vigorously, order was maintained without the overt use of excessive force. The attitude of the Canadians toward the religious authorities makes it plain that their opinions had to be taken into account. When it was decided, immediately after the inauguration of royal government in 1663, to impose tithes on the people for the support of a secular clergy, the bishop stipulated that it be at the rate of one thirteenth of the produce of the land, payable in wheat. The people protested vigorously, claiming this to be more than they could afford. The bishop reduced his demand to one twentieth, but the habitants and seigneurs would agree to pay only one twenty-sixth of their


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wheat, not of all their produce, with a five year exemption for newly settled concessions. With this the clergy had to be satisfied. That it was not enough is made plain by the fact that the crown had to provide the clergy with an annual subsidy to make up the difference between what the tithe produced and what the curés needed. By the 1730s however, as more land came into production, many of the parish priests were relatively well off. Further evidence that the Canadians were anything but subservient to clerical authority is provided by the frequent ordonnances of the intendant ordering the habitants of this or that parish to behave with more respect toward the cloth; to cease their practice of walking out of church as soon as the curé began his sermon; of standing in the lobby arguing, even brawling, during the service; of slipping out to a nearby tavern; of bringing their dogs into church and expostulating with the beadle who tried to chase them out. Frequently the bishop thundered from the pulpit against the women who attended mass wearing elaborate coiffures and low-cut gowns. But all to no avail; décolletage remained that of the Paris salons. When Bishop St. Vallier somehow learned that the female members of his flock wore nothing but petticoats under their gowns he was horrified. In a curiously phrased pastoral letter he demanded that they immediately cease to imperil their immortal souls in this manner. 25 What the response was is not known. And a practice that might be advanced in support of the thesis that the frontier bred initiative was the Canadian custom of mariage à la gaumine, a form of "do it yourself" marriage ceremony which both the clergy and the civil authorities frowned on severely.26 At the upper end of the social scale, the most significant feature of this Canadian society was the aristocratic and military ethos that dominated it. This was not unique to Canada; it was part of the French old régime heritage. In the seventeenth century the aim of the rising, powerful bourgeois class was to gain entry into the ranks of the nobility, or at least to emulate the way of life of the aristocracy. Molière made this plain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Despite the fact that the Canadian economy was basically commercial and dependent largely on the fur trade, bourgeois commercial values did not dominate society; indeed, they were scorned. The ambitious Canadian merchant wished to be something more than prosperous. That was merely one rung on the ladder. The ultimate goal was entry into the ranks of the noblesse and receipt of the coveted Order of St. Louis for distinguished service. More than wealth, men wished to bequeath to their sons a higher social status and a name distinguished for military valor, some great achievement, or the holding of high office. The proverb, "Bon renom vaut mieux que ceinture dorée," summed up the Canadian philosophy at all levels of society."27 Wealth was, of course, desired, and ethics frequently went by the board in its pursuit. Men who might well have been ennobled for valiant service were denied if they lacked the means to live in a fitting manner. Wealth was


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sought, not for itself, but to enable men to live in the style of the class they sought to enter. Father Charlevoix, the Jesuit historian, writing in the 1740s commented on one aspect of this proclivity: ''There is a great fondness for keeping up one's position, and nearly no one amuses himself by thrift. Good cheer is supplied, if its provision leaves means enough to be well clothed; if not, one cuts down on the table in order to be well dressed." He then went on to compare the Canadians with the English colonists to the south: "The English colonists amasses means and makes no superfluous expense; the French enjoys what he has and often parades what he has not. The former works for his heirs; the latter leaves his in the need in which he is himself to get along as best he can." 28 In Canada it was in some ways much easier than in France for ambitious men to adopt the values and attitudes of the nobility and even to become ennobled. Despite the fact that society was very much status ordered, it was relatively easy for a talented, ambitious man or women to move up the social scale. Four factors help account for this: the availability of free land, the economic opportunities presented by the fur trade, the Royal edict of 1685 which permitted members of the nobility resident in Canada to engage directly in commerce and industry, something that, with a few notable exceptions such as the manufacture of glass and paper, was not permitted in France, and the presence of a large corps of regular troops in the colony in which Canadians could obtain commissions as officers. It is rather ironic that when the king issued the edict of 1685 allowing nobles in Canada to engage in trade, he intended merely to stimulate the colonial economy.29 It quickly came, however, to function in a way not anticipated by Louis XIV, for if those who were of noble status could engage in trade, there was nothing to prevent merchants and entrepreneurs who were not noble from aspiring to become so, provided they fulfilled the other requirements. Thus a Canadian of humble origin could make his fortune in the fur trade, acquire a seigneury, have his sons, if not himself, commissioned in the Troupes de la Marine, and hope that one day he, or his sons, would be ennobled for valiant service. Enough Canadians accomplished this feat to encourage a much larger number to govern their lives accordingly. It was the old story, few are chosen but many hear the call. To be a seigneur, the first rung up the social ladder, was a distinct mark of social superiority, made manifest in a variety of ways; hence there was never any lack of applicants;30 but it necessitated accepting rather onerous responsibilities and in the seventeenth century most seigneurs had a hard time making ends meet. Yet so eager were the Canadians to attach the coveted particle de to their names that by 1760 there were nearly 250 seigneuries in the colony. Even more significant, it is estimated that there were some 200 arrière fiefs, or sub-seigneuries, that is, small seigneuries granted by a seigneur within his own seigneury to a friend or relative whom he wished to see get on in the world. Another significant point is that many seigneurs, the majority of whom lived in the towns and not on their lands,


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did not bother to collect the stipulated dues, the cens et rentes, from their censitaires. Clearly, many seigneurs were not interested in the economic aspect of land holding. The only other motive would appear to be the social prestige attached to the title. In other words, Joseph Blondeau was undoubtedly a good name, but Joseph Blondeau de Grandarpents, or even de Petitarpents, was much better. There were some who sought to gain entry into the noblesse through the back door, by simply assuming a title and claiming its privileges. In 1684 a royal edict was enacted levying a fine of 500 livres on any Canadian who falsely claimed noble status. A few years later the intendant Champigny stated that there were many such in the colony, but in time of war he thought it unwise to initiate an enquiry lest it cool their ardor for military campaigns. He also declared that several officers had requested to be ennobled, and although some of them merited it, he could not support their requests because they lacked the means to live as members of the noblesse should. 31 Although gaining entry into the ranks of the nobility was by no means easy, it was remarked in the mid-eighteenth century that there was a greater number of nobles in New France than in all the other French colonies combined. It was not the actual number of nobles that was important; rather it was the scale of values that they imparted to the whole of society, the tone that was set, and the influence it had on the way of life of the Canadian people. Inextricably mingled with, and greatly strengthening, this aristocratic ethos was the military tradition of New France. In Europe wars were fought by professional armies, and civilians were not directly involved unless they happened to get in the way while a battle was being fought. This was more true of France and Britain than of other countries, since they both had sense enough to wage their wars on other nations' territory. In Canada when war came, all the settled areas were a battlefield and everyone was obliged to be a combatant. The administration of the colony was organized along military lines. The entire male population was formed into militia companies, given military training, and employed in campaigns. In 1665 the Carignan Salières regiment arrived in the colony to quell the Iroquois; it comprised over a thousand officers and men, and many of them stayed on as settlers. This greatly enhanced the influence of the military, for at that time the total population was less then 3000. Twenty years later the Troupes de la Marine were permanently stationed in the colony, some 1300 men and 400 officers by the end of the century among a total population of 15,000. In the campaigns against the Iroquois and the English colonies it was quickly discovered that Canadians made better officers in forest warfare than did regulars from France. Consequently this career was opened to the seigneurs and their sons. They seized on it eagerly. Youths in their teens were enrolled as cadets and served on campaigns with their fathers or elder brothers to gain experience, then were sent out in command of scouting and small raiding parties to capture prisoners for intelligence purposes. The


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minister, however, thought they were being enrolled at far too early an age, while still mere children, and suspected the practice was merely a means for their families to draw military pay and allowances. Mme. de Vaudreuil, wife of the governor general, declared, "It would be advantageous for the well-being of the colony to accept youths of good families as cadets in the troops at fifteen or sixteen; that would form their characters early, render them capable of serving well and becoming good officers." The minister and Louis XIV were not convinced; they ordered that cadets had to be seventeen before they could be enrolled. 32 The dominant values of Canadian society were clearly those of the soldier and the noble, the military virtues those held in highest regard. The social circles of Montreal and Quebec, comprising the senior officials, the army officers, and seigneurs, were undoubtedly very urbane, reflecting the polish and social graces of the French noblesse. Certainly Peter Kalm found this society much more civilized than that which he encountered in the English colonies where few people thought of anything but making money and not spending it.33 Some of the senior officials who came from France in the eighteenth century, men like the intendant Claude Thomas Dupuy and the Comte de la Galissonière, took a keen interest in natural science, as had earlier the doctor and surgeon Michel Sarrazin who was a corresponding member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, but few Canadians showed much interest in intellectual pursuits. The parish schools provided a basic education for those who wished it, and the Jesuit college at Quebec offered facilities as good as those in the larger French provincial cities. The letters and dispatches of Canadian-born officers and merchant traders in the mid-eighteenth century demonstrate that, with the rare exception of an officer such as Claude-Pierre Pécaudy de Contrecoeur who although a competent commandant had obviously had little schooling, they were all well-educated men. They expressed themselves succinctly and quite often felicitously; their syntax was good, the subjunctive employed where required; the literary style as well as the contents of their letters make them a pleasure to read. In fact, these men appear to have been as well educated as their counterparts in the French and British armies. Yet the colony did not develop a literary tradition; the published journals depicting life in the colony were written by men from France and were intended for a metropolitan audience. But then, Canadians would see little merit in describing what was familiar to all their compatriots. Several Canadians had large private libraries, but there was no public library. Nor was there a printing press in the colony, hence no newspaper, not because of any sinister repression of thought by the clergy, but because there was no great need therefore no demand for one. In these realms of activity Canada lagged far behind the English colonies. In short, New France was the Sparta, not the Athens of North America.


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6 The Fur Trade Frontier, 16631700 In 1663, when Canada became a royal province, the territory claimed by France extended a few miles past the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers. Beyond that point, on the shores of the Great Lakes, were only a handful of itinerant fur traders and Jesuit missionaries; the Indian nations still held undisputed title to the interior of North America. By the end of the century the French had explored, laid claim to, and in varying degree were in possession of the Great Lakes basin, the river routes west to Lake Winnipeg, and the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf of Mexico. Scattered throughout this vast wilderness area were fur trade and missionary posts, some with military garrisons. The Indian nations of the west were by this time bound to the French in a commercial and military alliance. Treaties and alliances, then as now, were not made for something but against something; that is, they were directed against hostile powers. Without this hostility, latent or manifest, there would be no need for alliances. So it was in seventeenth-century North America. The earliest French commercial and military alliances with the Indian nations were intended to counter the competition of unlicensed traders at Tadoussac; subsequently they were


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negotiated to maintain French dominance in the fur trade against Dutch and English competition. At the end of the century they became the means to contain the English along the Atlantic seaboard and on the shores of Hudson Bay. This change from economic to political ends was to have drastic consequences. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who took over the direction of colonial affairs in 1663, strongly opposed French westward expansion. When the intendant Jean Talon, after being in the colony only a few weeks, proposed the establishment of a vast French empire stretching from north of the St. Lawrence, southwest to Florida or even Mexico, Colbert refused to entertain any such wild notions. He advised Talon that even had the king not been faced with urgent problems in Europe, it would be very poor policy to depopulate France in order to populate Canada. There was, he pointed out, a limit to the number of settlers the colony could absorb in a given time; to send more would only result in their starving to death, or at least bringing great hardship on both themselves and the colonists already established. "The true way to strengthen that colony," he wrote, "is to cause justice to reign, to establish a good civil administration, to take care of the settlers, to give them peace, tranquillity and abundance, and train them to defend themselves against all manner of foes, for these things are the basis and foundation of every establishment." In this way the colony would grow by degrees and in time could become very considerable. In conclusion, he declared that it was manifestly impossible to implement such grandiose colonizing schemes as Talon proposed unless one had surplus people to populate the new states, and France did not. 1 It cannot be said that Colbert's plans for the diversification of the Canadian economy were a complete failure, but they did not enjoy the degree of success he had hoped for and took longer than he had anticipated to show appreciable results. Had it not been that the economic activities were overshadowed by the fur trade, their extent might well appear in a better light. Colbert had no desire to see the amount of fur shipped to France diminish, just the reverse in fact. All he wanted was to ensure that this trade did not hinder his long-range plans for Canada's economic development. It was with some misgivings that he allowed the Canadians to engage in the fur trade at all. "It is to be feared," he wrote, "that by means of this trade, the habitants will remain idle a good part of the year, whereas if they were not allowed to engage in it they would be obliged to apply themselves to cultivating their land."2 It is therefore rather ironic that it was Colbert and Louis XIV who inadvertently opened the floodgates to a vastly extended fur trade, and with it French expansion into the interior, which drained off the colony's limited supplies of both capital and labor so badly needed to develop the resources of the central colony. The regular troops they sent to Canada, in bringing the Iroquois to terms, allowed the fur trade to expand to limits previously


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undreamed of. In 1665, while negotiations with the Iroquois were underway, 400 Ottawa arrived at Trois-Rivières with 150,000 livres worth of furs. The following year, 100,000 livres worth reached La Rochelle, and in 1667, 550,000 livres worth were shipped to France. 3 This sudden flood of fur, mainly beaver, forced a reduction in price from 9 livres the pound to 6 for greasy beaver, and dry beaver had to be reduced to 3 livres the pound.4 Despite this 50 percent reduction, the profits to be made were still great, far greater than could be made in any other way. Moreover, since it was now possible for the western Indians to bring their furs to Montreal in safety, it was by the same token possible for the Canadians to voyage to the Indian villages to obtain the pick of the furs, and at cheaper prices. In their attempts to forestall one another and to get beyond the Indian middlemen, they pushed farther and farther west. Colbert issued stern edicts forbidding the Canadians to leave the settled areas in the central colony to trade for furs, but to no avail. The rivers led west and nothing could stop the men from slipping away in their frail canoes. Another factor that greatly stimulated this westward drive for furs was the fixing of beaver prices by ministerial decree. Between 1665 and 1674, when Colbert was finally obliged to admit the failure of his Compagnie de l'Occident, close its books, and have its title to New France revert to the crown, various devices were used to assure stability and facilitate the marketing of the commodity. In 1675 Jean Oudiette, a tax farmer, leased the rights of the Compagnie de l'Occident in Canada and elsewhere for a seven year term. He had to pay the crown enough each year to meet the normal administrative costs of the colony, which Colbert sought to limit to 36,000 livres a year. Oudiette lost money on the Canadian trade but likely made up for it in the West Indies sugar and slave monopoly. The Canadians certainly benefitted. The Ministry of Marine fixed the prices the company had to pay for beaver and moose hides. The Canadians were thus not at the mercy of the vagaries of the market in France; the law of supply and demand was held in abeyance; and at the established prices profits were guaranteed, regardless of how much beaver was brought to the bureau of the company. Nothing could have been better contrived to bring about expansion in the fur trade, or of the numbers engaged in it, and nothing that Colbert could do from his littered desk on the far side of the ocean could stem the surge westward. It was too alluring, and much too profitable, to be denied. Colbert had warned the intendant Talon, "it would be better to restrict oneself to an amount of land that the colony will be able to sustain on its own, rather than to embrace too vast an area whereby one would perhaps one day be obliged to abandon a part with some reduction of the prestige of His Majesty and of the State."6 But the Canadians, and Talon, lacked his foresight. Talon began sending out parties, ostensibly to explore the lands west and north of the central colony, to seek mineral deposits, to discover a


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route to the western ocean, and to claim all the lands they traversed for France. His main purpose, however, was to bypass the Ottawa middlemen and enter into trade relations directly with the more distant Algonquian nations who supplied the Ottawa. 7 In 1668 Jean Peré was sent to seek the copper mines of Lake Superior. The following year Adrien Jolliet was sent to join him. They returned to Quebec by way of Lake Erie, the Niagara portage, Lake Ontario, and the upper St. Lawrence, opening up an alternate route to the Ottawa RiverLake Huron route to the west. That same year two Sulpician priests, François Dollier de Casson, onetime captain in Turenne's cavalry, and Renée de Bréhaut de Galinée, with seven Canadians, voyaged to Lake Erie by way of Lake Ontario and claimed possession for France of the lands around these two lakes. Two years later Talon sent Jean-Baptiste de St. Lusson to explore the northwestern lands as far as possible. He went little farther than the Jesuit mission at Sault Ste. Marie, where he claimed the lands of the Ottawa nation for the French crown. The whole of the Great Lakes basin was to be regarded as French territory. Still another party was sent north to claim the lands from the St. Lawrence to Hudson Bay. They made a great haul of beaver. Talon hastened to inform Colbert that these parties cost the crown nothing. The furs they garnered en route covered the expenses. Others in the colony, seeing the canoes of Talon's exploration parties returning heavily laden with prime furs, were not slow to follow suit. By 1670 French traders, men such as Nicolas Perrot and Louis Jolliet, had established trading posts on Green Bay and were trading on the Wisconsin River. Reports again began to filter back to Quebec of a great river, "Messisipi," flowing to the western or the southern ocean. Colbert admitted only two reasons that could justify French expansion into the west: one was to forestall other nations that might seek westward expansion in order to interfere with the fur trade, but he could see little danger of this in the immediate future; the other was the discovery of a western route to a southern sea where an ice-free, year-round port serving Canada could be established. In May 1674 he informed the governor at Quebec that such a discovery would be of tremendous value since "the worst thing about Canada is the entrance to the river which, being so far to the north, allows ships to enter only during four, five or six months of the year."8 Jean Talon and the recently appointed governor general, Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac et de Palluau, had, however, anticipated him. In 1672 they had dispatched Louis Jolliet to locate the Mississippi and discover where it led. After Talon's return to France, Frontenac continued his expansionist policy in a much more aggressive manner. He was quick to see that with the proper organization great profits could be made in the fur trade. That this


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ran completely counter to Colbert's aims for French colonial development meant nothing to him; this was merely another problem to be circumvented one way or another. Prior to Frontenac's arrival Talon had proposed the establishment of garrisoned forts on Lake Ontario to defend that region against possible Iroquois or English incursions, but Colbert had refused to give his assent. Frontenac therefore decided to build a trading post on the lake and inform Colbert afterward. In 1673 he forced the habitants of Montreal to provide labor and materials throughout the summer and constructed Fort Frontenac at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The Iroquois, who regarded this territory north to the Ottawa River as their hunting grounds, were gravely disconcerted but for the moment they could not oppose this invasion of their lands. Not only were the Andastes and Mohegan pressing them hard but their source of essential European goods had just been disrupted by the Dutch seizure of New York. The Montreal fur traders, led by their local governor François-Marie Perrot, were every bit as disturbed as the Iroquois by Frontenac's move. They feared that this trading post would drain off a great deal of the furs that would otherwise have gone to them at Montreal, and also that it would serve as a staging post for Frontenac's men to engross the trade of the Algonquian nations farther west. This was exactly what Frontenac had in mind. The colony was soon divided into two hostile factions, that of Frontenac and that of the Montreal merchants. Conflicts between the two broke out within the colony as the rivalry became more intense, until the administration was completely disrupted. 9 And in the background the Iroquois sullenly watched, willing to trade at the new post while it suited their convenience, and unable to take any hostile action because the French held the upper hand as long as their war with the Andastes and Mohegan lasted. The following year the role that this post was intended to play was made very plain. In August 1674 Louis Jolliet returned to Quebec after his epic journey with Father Jacques Marquette down the Mississippi almost to the mouth of the Arkansas, far enough to determine that the great river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico rather than the Pacific or Atlantic. As Frontenac was quick to point out, here was a direct route for canoes and sailing vessels from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico; and Jolliet proposed the building of a canal at the Chicago portage which would enable sailing vessels to transport goods back and forth between Lake Erie and the Gulf. Colbert, although he could see the possibilities as well as the next man, did not intend this discovery to wreck his plans for colonial development. When Jolliet requested permission to establish a settlement in these new lands, the minister refused on the grounds that the population in the St. Lawrence Valley would have to be augmented considerably before there could be any thought of creating new colonies in the far interior.10 But Frontenac held very different views on the French purpose in


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Jesuit map, 1673, depicting the discovery of the Mississippi by Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette, S.J. (Public Archives of Canada)


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North America. Although he did not inform the minister that he thought his antiexpansionist policy was misguided, his actions make it plain that he favored the greatest possible increase in the fur trade. As he saw it, the agricultural colony in the St. Lawrence Valley existed merely as a base to serve the needs of this staple trade. 11 He never took into account what the consequences of this expansion would be; he was concerned only with the short-term benefits of increased fur trade profits. With the assistance of friends and relatives who possessed considerable influence at the Court, he was able to obtain privileges for members of his entourage that were denied to others. One of his coterie, the man for whom he had obtained title to a seigneury at Fort Frontenac, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was able, with Frontenac's backing, to obtain the right to establish fur trade posts in the Mississippi Valley and to engage in trade with the Indians along that river and its tributaries. The privilege was granted La Salle to enable him to explore the Mississippi to its mouth in the hope that it would provide a route to Mexico, but this exploration had to be accomplished within five years and entirely at his expense.12 Colbert and Louis XIV had clearly been led to believe that this was a means to have these lands explored and claimed for France at no expense to the crown. La Salle and Frontenac, however, used the permission to explore as a means to monopolize the fur trade of central North America. Within a few years they had established a chain of posts at the foot of Lake Michigan and on the Illinois and Mississippi rivers: in 1676 a staging post at Niagara, in 1679 a trading post on the St. Joseph River, in 1680 Fort Crèvecoeur on the Illinois, then Fort St. Louis and Fort Prud-homme on the Mississippi below the Ohio. Not until 1682 did La Salle proceed down the Mississippi beyond the point that Jolliet and Marquette had reached, and on to the Gulf. Once these posts were established, La Salle, with Frontenac's connivance, sought to prevent all but their own men from trading in the vast area south of the Great Lakes. Anyone caught doing so without La Salle's written permission had his goods seized. At the same time La Salle's men traveled north to trade with the Ottawa and Assiniboin, despite the fact that his commission specifically forbade him to trade with the nations that normally took their furs to Montreal, and La Salle himself was investigating the feasibility of shipping the furs to France by way of the Gulf of Mexico. This last would have enabled him to sever connections with New France and given him complete control of an independent commercial empire of the west.13 Needless to say, the merchant fur traders of New France and the coureurs de bois watched this development with mounting alarm. Any vague hope of their paying heed to the royal edicts forbidding trade with the Indians outside the confines of the colony quickly disappeared, and more and more canoes began voyaging westward. They made Michilimackinac, at the junction of Lakes Michigan and Huron, their main base. When


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their men arrived from Montreal, they obtained new canoes and fresh food supplies, then pushed on farther into the interior to trade with the Sioux along the upper Mississippi, with the Assiniboin beyond Lake Superior, and north with the tribes above Lake Nipigon. In these areas they built their small cabins near the Indian villages, until the entire vast area from Lake Winnipeg south to the Ohio and north to Hudson Bay was dotted with trading posts. At some of them scores of traders gathered, at others only two or three men. In this fashion the form of the French Empire in North America took shape, in opposition to the policy of the crown. It was a curious, indeed a unique, form of empire. The French did not really occupy the area they now claimed; in fact, much of it they did not yet claim. They were no more interested in occupying land than were New England seamen who voyaged to Africa for cargoes of slaves or tropical produce. Eventually they had to claim these lands and maintain military garrisons to protect their interests, in just the same way as, in the nineteenth century, European powers seized territory by military force in Africa and the Far East to protect the interests of their traders and missionaries. In North America in the late seventeenth century the French merely voyaged through the lands to trade with the Indians, obtain a cargo of furs, then transport it back to Montreal. The Indians were the important factor. It was they who provided the desired commodity in a semimanufactured state; thus their interests, their traditional way of life, their seminomadic hunting economy, had to be preserved. Yet the Indian's way of life was radically altered. Tribes ever more remote became enmeshed in this European economic empire and became dependent on European goods. They achieved a somewhat higher standard of living, but ultimately paid a very heavy price for it. The consequences of this development for the French were also far-reaching. The number of Canadians traveling to the west each year increased immeasurably. An entirely new social group unique to Canada, had emerged. In 1672 Jean-Baptiste Patoulet, Talon's deputy, estimated their number at three to four hundred. According to the intendant Jacques Duchesneau, by 1680 there were at least 800 coureurs de bois off in the wilderness, and, he added, ''I have been unable to ascertain the exact number because everyone associated with them covers up for them." 14 The great distances they traveled made it impossible to leave Montreal on a trading venture in the spring and return before freeze-up. Few men had the capital required to finance such voyages, thus the trade gradually came to be controlled by the wealthier men in the colony, split into the two rival and hostile factions. The life of the coureurs de bois, or voyageurs as they later came to be known, was no calling for weaklings or the fainthearted. Squatting on a narrow thwart, legs cramped by bales of goods or furs, these men paddled hour after hour from dawn to dusk, pausing occasionally for a pipe while the


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professional raconteur spun a tale from his inexhaustible supply, singing folk songs to the dip of the paddle, fortyfive to forty-eight strokes to the minute. For over a thousand miles the paddles thrust the canoes through the water. At rapids they were either roped upstream, the men wading up to the waist in the swift icy river, or the canoes and their cargoes were carried on a tump line, sometimes for miles around the turbulent waters. Going downstream the temptation was strong to run the rapids, and at every portage crosses marked where men had paid for this with their lives. Time could not be spared to hunt, the only food was two meals a day of corn meal mush flavored with salt pork, dried fish, or jerked venison, washed down with water, and a nip of brandy to aid the digestion. The casualty rate was high, and rheumatism too frequently made men old before their time, but the Canadians gloried in this life. Wherever a canoe could go these men went, seeking Indians with furs, bringing them within the orbit and control of this trading empire. But they changed the face of the land hardly at all. Their canoes left no marks on the rivers and lakes as they passed. A few trees were cut at a campsite or along a portage, or a larger clearing was made and a log house built where a post was established, but when abandoned in favor of a better and usually more distant site, only a few years were needed to erase all signs of its existence. Yet a few hundred such men held the west in fee for France. Despite the constant demands of Colbert that the exodus of Canadians for the west be stopped, it continued apace. He ordered Frontenac to establish public markets so that when the western Indians came down to Montreal with their furs all the Canadians would have the opportunity to trade with them and be less likely to succumb to the temptation to desert the colony. For a few years these fairs were held at Montreal, on the common by the river's edge. Nearby was a large open space where the Indians camped, frequently numbering in the hundreds. The Canadians set up stalls to display the goods they had to offer in trade. They came from all over the colony to take part, or to see the sights. Bronzed, near-nude warriors, their womenfolk and children, and their savage dogs sprawled around their cooking fires on the common or wandered through the narrow streets of Montreal, streets lined with steep-roofed gray stone houses, rubbing shoulders with pigtailed homespun-clad habitants, merchants in knee breeches and long coats, officers and senior officials in lace, hair powdered and hand on sword, nuns and priests in gray, brown, or black, and ladies with elaborately dressed hair in gray, brown, or blue cloaks reaching the ground. The citizens of the town had to maintain a close watch on the cattle in the nearby pastures and keep their dogs tied up; the Indians were all too likely to barbecue either, preferably the latter. But when the governor appeared, all was decorum. Seated in an arm chair, his interpreter, the officers of his guards, the senior officials, and members of the clergy beside him, he looked out over the serried ranks of


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silent impassive, obsidian-eyed faces, and listened to the long-drawn-out metaphors of the Indian orators. These declared eternal friendship for the French, complained about the high cost of trade goods, requested aid to repel their traditional foes, the Sioux or the Iroquois, and asked Onontio 15 to convey their greetings to the king across the ocean. To close their remarks they presented the governor with a few packs of choice pelts "to open his ears" to their pleas. The governor replied through an interpreter, heaping compliments on the Indians, exhorting them to heed the words of the Jesuits in their villages, to remain at peace, one tribe with another, and, above all, to have nothing to do with the English. After informing them how dearly both he and the king had their interests at heart, he distributed his presents from the royal warehouse: plumed hats, lace-bedecked coats, fancy hilted swords, dresses and trinkets for the women, and toys for the children. Then came the great feast, followed by enough brandy to make for conviviality, but not enough to allow the Indians to go berserk. Despite such precautions, however, the streets of Montreal sometimes resembled Dante's inferno. Too often the Indians saved the brandy issued them, then drew lots, the winners getting it all. Lacking the inhibitions that control the subconscious of Europeans, to some extent at least, once drunk they ran amok. Incest, mayhem, and murder occurred without restraint. All that the people of Montreal could do when the uproar transpired was bar their doors and shutters, stay indoors, and wait for the hideous clamor in the streets to subside, then haul away the mutilated bodies, some dead, some merely unconscious but with ears and noses bitten off, knife and tomahawk wounds draining blood onto the cobblestones and wooden sidewalks.16 Economically if not socially, it was perhaps unfortunate that these annual trading fairs did not last many years, but it was almost inevitable that they could not endure. With the Canadians willing and eager to transport goods to the west, there was no need for the Ottawa to make the long journey to Montreal. They undoubtedly obtained goods cheaper there than from the coureurs de bois, but the time taken in the voyage could be employed in trapping, hunting, or lazing about. Moreover, a visit to Montreal sometimes was followed by an epidemic of smallpox, measles, cholera, or influenza. Then, in 1680, the Iroquois renewed their long-thwarted attempt to gain control of the western fur trade, and that marked the end of the Montreal fur fairs as an established institution. Montreal now became the outport for voyages to the west. From this time on the trade itself centered at the western posts. In 1681, Colbert was forced to admit defeat. His attempts to challenge geography and curb the acquisitive instincts of the French in Canada had, for a variety of reasons, been a complete failure. There were now so many coureurs de bois in the west it was admitted that it would be impossible to


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punish them all, even had it been possible to apprehend them. 17 A royal edict was sent to the Sovereign Council at Quebec granting amnesty to all coureurs de bois, provided that they returned to the colony without delay, and a licensing system for trading in the west was inaugurated. The governor general was now empowered to grant up to twenty-five trading permits a year, each of which allowed the recipient to send a canoe load of trade goods with three men to trade in the Indian villages. No one was to receive a permit two years in a row, and they all had to be viséed by the intendant.18 Colbert's hope was that all the coureurs de bois would avail themselves of the amnesty, return to useful employment in the colony, and await their turn for a permit. In this too he was to be disappointed. The minister was not the only party perturbed by the trend of events in North America. To him, expansion into the west represented a dispersal of French strength which placed everything in jeopardy. To others it looked different. The Iroquois, the governors of New York, and a few years later the Spanish, all viewed the presence of French traders in the west, particularly south of the Great Lakes, with alarm. In 1676 the Andastes ended their ancient war with the western Iroquois, made their peace, moved from their lands in the Susquehanna valley to the Seneca villages, and became part of this nation, thus greatly enhancing its strength. At about the same time the Mohegan to the east made their peace with the Mohawk. As long as the Iroquois had had these two nations to cope with, the French had held the balance of power. Now that balance was destroyed. The Iroquois had their hands free to renew their bid for control of the western fur trade. Their friendly attitude toward the French turned to hostility, and the Jesuit missionaries in their villages reported that an attack on Fort Frontenac and the French allies could come at any time.19 But first, the western Iroquois turned their attention westward to the Ohio Valley, to lands which they claimed had been their hunting grounds and which the Illinois and Miami nations had occupied while the Iroquois were defending themselves against the Andastes. They were determined to regain this territory. It was just at this juncture of events, while the Iroquois were organizing a full-scale campaign to deal with the Illinois as they had earlier dealt with the Huron, that La Salle and his men established their posts in the Illinois country. His commercial alliance inevitably meant that the Illinois and Miami were under French suzerainty and had to be given military aid if attacked. The western expansionist aims of the French and the Iroquois were in opposition. The newly established French bases in the Illinois country were a thousand miles from the central colony, and the communication route to them was flanked by Iroquois-dominated territory throughout most of its length. This was the sort of situation that Colbert had envisaged, and warned against, seemingly in vain. Despite the reports from the missionaries in the west, the governor of


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New France took no steps to counter the threat. Instead, he denied its existence. 20 In September 1680 the clash came. Six to seven hundred Iroquois warriors invaded the Illinois country. Henri Tonti, La Salle's commandant, was wounded, but he and his men managed to escape before the Iroquois launched their main assault. An Illinois village was destroyed and several hundred, mostly women and children, were taken prisoners. Frontenac refused to abandon his pusillanimous policy, and this merely encouraged the Iroquois to continue their aggression against all the French allies and to pillage French canoes on the river routes and even Fort Frontenac. In the midst of these events Frontenac was dismissed from office; not, ironically, for his failure to counter the Iroquois threat, for he had successfully disguised its seriousness in his reports to the minister, who was loath to consider the expense of a war in the interior of North America and hence readily accepted the governor's accounts at face value. When Frontenac departed, the colony was without defenses. There were no forts in the scattered settlements; Montreal did not even have a palisade; the Iroquois could have devastated the colony at any time. His successor, LeFebvre de La Barre, upon arriving at Quebec in 1682 found himself faced with a totally unexpected and quite desperate situation. He conferred with the colonial leaders and then reported to the minister: "I have found this colony on the verge of being forced into war by the Iroquois and in a condition to succumb."21 The members of La Barre's assembly of notables maintained that it was the English who were inciting the Iroquois to break the French hold on the western fur trade, that the Five Nations would attack the French allies one at a time, destroy them piecemeal, drive the French out of the west, then launch their full strength against New France. They advised that the only safe policy the French could pursue was to give the western allies every support, obtain a few hundred regular troops from France to guard the settlements, and muster all the militia to invade the cantons of the western Iroquois and destroy them. There is little or no evidence that the English colonies were responsible for the Iroquois aggression. Governor Thomas Dongan of New York was eager to contest the French hold on the west, but the merchants of Albany who dominated the English colonial fur trade showed little enthusiasm for such imperialist ventures.22 Were the Iroquois to have gained control of the western fur trade, the Albany traders would have been very pleased, but as it was they obtained plentiful supplies of furs from two sources, the Iroquois and the Canadian smugglers. They paid higher prices for beaver than did the French Company of the Farm, and some of their English trade goods, particularly woolens, were much superior to anything the French had to offer. Consequently, there had long been a steady flow of contraband furs


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south to Albany from Fort Frontenac and Montreal. As long as this continued, the Albany merchants were content to let well enough alone. In any event, the Iroquois needed no incitement from the English to pursue their aggressive policy. La Barre found the French position was threatened also from the north. For over a decade the English had had their trading posts in Hudson Bay, and the French had been hard put to it to prevent the tribes north of the Great Lakes from taking the bulk of their furs to the "Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson's Bay." The majority of the northern Indians had been retained in the French commercial alliance only because of the presence of so many coureurs de bois in their midst, the refusal of the English traders to adapt themselves to Indian ways or to treat them as anything approaching equals, and the long, difficult river voyage to the Bay. Yet the Hudson's Bay Company was able to sell on the European market large quantities of prime northern beaver, and this reduced the amount that the French Company of the Farm could dispose of. Previously, Colbert had been loath to challenge the English presence in the Bay owing to the good relations between the two crowns, but in 16791680 he had sanctioned the formation of a Quebec-based Compagnie de la Baie du Nord. This led to armed clashes between the rival companies, but the French government did not provide adequate aid and the minister's decision that all furs taken at the Bay posts had to be brought to Quebec to have the tax deducted rather than taken directly to France proved a grave hindrance. The Canadian company under these conditions was able to annoy the Hudson's Bay Company, but not drive it out. This meant that the English had gained virtual control of the far northern entrance to the continent. 23 What made these grave problems facing the French in North America much more difficult to grapple with, let alone resolve, was the removal of Colbert from the direction of Canadian affairs. In 1681 his son Jean-Baptiste, the Marquis de Seignelay, had been given this responsibility, and in 1683 Colbert died. Unfortunately, Seignelay was not the man his father had been.24 The feeble reaction of the Ministry of Marine to the frantic pleas of La Barre and the newly appointed intendant, Jacques de Meulles, made this all too plain. In 1683 Seignelay neglected to deal with the Canadian dispatches before the annual convoy sailed for Quebec. A senior commis in the ministry took it on himself to send off very equivocal instructions to the effect that war with the Iroquois would be bad for the colony; therefore La Barre should reduce them to obedience without war, but if he should have to launch a campaign against them, he was to bring it to a swift and successful conclusion. To aid him, 150 Troupes de la Marine hastily recruited in the grogshops of Rochefort were sent, along with supplies of arms, the bulk of which were found to be worthless. Meanwhile,


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the aggressiveness of the Iroquois increased in direct proportion to the failure of the French to respond. La Barre dispatched some of his few available officers and men to garrison the threatened western posts, sent urgent pleas to the minister for more troops and munitions, and made preparations to march his available forces to attack the western Iroquois. The dispatching of regular army officers as commandants at the western posts was in itself an important development, the significance of which was overlooked in this time of crisis. From 1683 on, military garrisons manned these posts, and inevitably, despite stringent orders from the minister, they became deeply involved in the fur trade. Officers and men became very eager for the appointments. A few years as commandant at one of the posts sufficed to make a small fortune. 25 They did, however, serve as an agency of control. Orders could be sent from Versailles to a military trading post in the heart of the continent, four thousand miles away, and when these orders did not run counter to the private interests of the commandants, or were too imperative to be ignored, they were obeyed. The writ of the king of France now extended much more firmly over half the continent, and its effectiveness was quickly put to the test. In the spring of 1684 the Seneca launched an assault on Fort St. Louis in the Illinois country. The commandant, the Chevalier Henri de Baugy, with a garrison of twenty-four French and twenty-two Indian allies managed to withstand the Iroquois siege, but when La Barre received word of the assault in May, he had to anticipate the worst. Everyone in the colony urged him to attack the Iroquois in their villages before they overran all the western posts and drove the French out of the west. Here was the weakness of the French position. Their hold on the interior was extremely tenuous. The widely scattered fortified trading posts, manned by a few men, were very vulnerable and dependent on the maintenance of communications along the river routes to Montreal. The French hold on this vast area was dependent on their ability to retain their Indian allies in a commercial alliance. Were these tribes to lose confidence in French ability to maintain the posts and the supply routes to them, there was a grave likelihood that they would come to terms with the Iroquois. These tribes always had the alternative of trading their furs with the Albany merchants via the Iroquois would-be middlemen or at the Hudson's Bay Company posts. The Iroquois were very conscious of this and always sought to divide the French allies, making attractive overtures to one tribe while concentrating their attacks on another. The caliber of the French officers at the western posts now became vital. They had to be skilled diplomats, commercial agents, guerrilla leaders, and, most of all, men of exceptionally strong character able to hold the respect and allegiance of the western allies who considered themselves under no obligation to consult any interests but their own. These were the circumstances that led La Barre in July 1684 to take a motley force of Troupes de la Marine, Canadian militia, and allied Indians,


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over eleven hundred men in all, to Fort Frontenac preparatory to an invasion of the Iroquois cantons. La Barre, however, lacked resolution. The deeper he went into enemy-controlled country, the more difficult his task appeared. His courage ebbed, as did the effectiveness of his men. An epidemic of the tertian ague, Spanish influenza, swept through the ranks. When the Iroquois offered to negotiate a treaty of peace, he immediately accepted. With the bulk of his men hardly able to stand, completely at the mercy of the Iroquois warriors, he had no alternative but to accept the Iroquois terms, which were couched in scornful, humiliating phrases. The Iroquois allowed the French to return to Montreal in safety, but they declared their determination to destroy the Illinois. A great nation allied to the French, under French suzerainty, had been abandoned. The significance of this was not lost on the other allies. Nor was it lost on Louis XIV when he received a copy of the treaty. For the first time he, and Seignelay, examined closely the situation in Canada. They found it deplorable; the king's pride and prestige could not tolerate it. La Barre was made the scapegoat and recalled in disgrace. His successor was Jacques-Réné de Brisay, Marquis de Denonville, brigadier and colonel of the Queen's Dragoons, generally regarded as one of the better officers in the king's armies. He proved to be one of the better governors general of Canada. He was given a free hand to deal with the Iroquois problem as he best saw fit, and provided with ever 1600 Troupes de la Marine, along with adequate supplies. When he landed at Quebec on August 1, 1685, he took stock of the situation and quickly became convinced that Canada was threatened by a giant pincers movement. To the north, the Hudson's Bay Company threatened French control of the northwest. Were the English company to succeed in its aims, the French would find themselves sitting impotent in a few isolated log-palisaded posts in the midst of the northern wilderness. To the south, the Iroquois, urged on by the governor of New York, threatened French control of the western Great Lakes basin and the lands south to the Mississippi. Denonville immediately set to work to counter both these threats. He dealt with the northern menace in 1686 by sending 105 men, regulars and Canadian militia??? through the forest to James Bay. They seized three English posts at the "bottom of the Bay" and 50,000 prime beaver pelts. Despite the recently negotiated Treaty of Neutrality between the two crowns and the infuriated protests of Whitehall, the French maintained their position until the end of the ensuing war. Denonville declared that the threat from the south could best be dealt with by purchasing the province of New York from its proprietor, James II. The possibility of this transaction being effected was, however, too remote to allow him to neglect other measures. All the reports he received from the Jesuit missionaries and the post commanders convinced him that the French position in North America could not be made secure until the Iroquois had


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Hubert Jaillot's map, 1685, depicting the struggle for control of Hudson Bay. (Public Archives of Canada)


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been crushed. He therefore began making very careful preparations for a full-scale campaign against the Seneca, the most numerous and the farthest removed of the Five Nations. While he was engaged in these preparations, his fears and suspicions of the role played by the English authorities and traders of New York were confirmed. In 1686 Thomas Dongan sent a trading expedition to the Ottawa of Michilimackinac, offering them goods at very low prices. This further undermined the French position in the west, already gravely weakened by Frontenac's craven policy and the failure of La Barre's campaign. Dongan intended sending another expedition the following year, and Denonville had to counter it. This he did with such success that two parties of Albany traders going by different routes were captured and spent some weeks in jail at Quebec before being sent home to spread the good word. The Canadian renegades who had guided them were summarily executed. The Albany merchants made no further attempts to invade French-claimed territory north of the Great Lakes. The Seneca campaign, launched in June 1687, did not enjoy an equal measure of success. Denonville reached the villages with his motley force of some 1500 men, regular troops, Canadian militia, coureurs de bois, and allied Indians. To have brought a force of this size so far into the enemy country was no mean feat, but after a brief skirmish with a few casualties on both sides, the Seneca fled. Their villages and food supplies were destroyed, but the enemy lived to fight another day. It was clear that a much larger force than the colony could provide was needed to subdue the Iroquois. The alternatives were a long drawn-out war of attrition, which inevitably meant heavy casualties and destruction in the French settlements, or a negotiated peace settlement. The abandonment of the west was not even contemplated. The growing threat of war in Europe as the League of Augsburg mustered its forces against France precluded any hope that additional troops would be sent to Canada. To make matters worse, an epidemic of smallpox and measles decimated the colony. Of a total population of just over 11,000 including the troops, over a thousand died. 26 With the sanction of Louis XIV, Denonville entered into negotiations for peace with the Iroquois and was able to bring them to accept his terms. They agreed that their ambassadors would return in the spring of the following year, 1689, to ratify the treaty. Denonville availed himself of the respite to send a large party of voyageurs to Michilimackinac to bring back the furs stored there. His Seneca campaign had prevented them being brought down during the preceding two years. The Canadians were now really in a bad way. The heavy death toll from disease had been a cruel blow; Iroquois war parties had already inflicted some casualties; and the interruption in the flow of furs from the west had reduced the people to penury. Conditions were no better during the spring and early summer of 1689. The people had to tighten their belts still further, and wait. Wait for the ships from France with badly needed


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supplies; wait for the fur brigade to return; wait for the Iroquois plenipotentiaries to come to ratify the peace treaty. Week succeeded week, as the summer passed. Neither the ships nor the Iroquois came. Elsewhere great forces were in movement. In Europe there was war; in England the ''Glorious Revolution" had ousted James II and seated William of Orange on the throne. Word of the Revolution and impending war with France reached officials at Boston in March. The Iroquois were immediately informed. Then, at dawn on August 5, the Iroquois came. Fifteen hundred of them fell on the settlement at Lachine, near Montreal. The settlers were startled awake by shrill war cries. Many of them were hacked down in their homes, others as they sought to flee. More were taken alive. Fifty-six of the seventy-seven habitations in the area were put to the torch. Surprise had been complete. Before nightfall the Iroquois horde retired across Lake St. Louis. The survivors, who had taken refuge in the garrisoned forts, were able to see the faint glow of their fires on the opposite shore. The Iroquois were celebrating their first victory of this war, which was to last to the end of the century, by burning a few of their prisoners slowly to death. But not all the news was bad. The voyageurs sent to Michilimackinac the preceding year by Denonville returned safely with 800,000 livres worth of furs, and in October the ships finally arrived from France. With the convoy came the Comte de Frontenac as governor general, appointed to replace Denonville, who had previously asked for his recall. Frontenac immediately tried to enter into peace negotiations with the Iroquois and, predictably, failed. The Five Nations, now sure of English support, were confident that they could destroy New France. Unfortunately, when the western allies heard of Frontenac's return and of his peace overtures, they lost all confidence in the French and began their own separate negotiations with the Iroquois. Meanwhile, the Iroquois attacks on the settlements continued. The Canadians wanted nothing more than to hit back, but the Iroquois war parties were too elusive. There was, however, Albany, whose people were presumed to have urged the Five Nations on. Were this Iroquois supply base to be destroyed, their ability to wage war would be greatly reduced. This was how the Canadians saw it; and they had good grounds for their view. They were confident that they could raze Albany to the ground. So were the colonial authorities in New York. 27 Frontenac took full advantage of the Canadians' aggressive spirit, but instead of sending a single strong force to attack Albany, he made the serious blunder of forming three raiding parties, which attacked small frontier settlements not only in New York but also in New England, whose people had not harmed New France and could well have been left alone. During the winter the hamlets of Schenectady, and Salmon Falls on the Atlantic seaboard, were easily overwhelmed. In May, Fort Loyal and the


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surrounding settlements were razed. Over a hundred English settlers were killed and many more taken prisoner; farms and livestock were destroyed. Terror was sown all along the frontier. It took a great deal to make the jealously independent English colonies unite in a common effort, but Frontenac's border raids accomplished it. The colonies combined their forces for a massive assault by land and sea to destroy New France. Encouraged by the easy success of a profitable pillaging expedition against Port Royal in Acadia the previous summer, an armada was assembled to attack Quebec by sea. At the same time an army was to march overland from Albany against Montreal. The land expedition collapsed for want of proper organization and martial spirit before it even reached Lake Champlain. The Boston fleet did succeed in reaching Quebec. The commander, Sir William Phips, sent Frontenac a bombastic demand for the surrender of the town. Frontenac rejected it with equal bombast, making his famous rejoinder: "I have no reply to make to your general other than from the mouths of my cannon and muskets." The New Englanders then landed, some thirteen hundred strong, on the tidal flats near the city. But when they saw several hundred regular troops lined up, with artillery, waiting for their assault, they thought better of it. After a few days of futile maneuvering, they re-embarked and sailed away. 28 The failure of these expeditions made it plain that despite their vastly superior numbers, the English colonies could not conquer Canada and that Canada was unable to destroy the Iroquois. From this point on, the war became a series of savage raids by small war parties, what the French called la petite guerre. During the early years the Iroquois decidedly had the better of it, but the Canadians eventually mastered the technique of guerrilla warfare. Neither side had any great superiority in weapons; it was purely a question of skill and endurance. The training the Canadians had received in the western fur trade was the vital factor in their survival. In this type of warfare the Troupes de la Marine proved to be of little use, and the bulk of the fighting fell to the militia, led, however, by regular officers, many of them Canadians. The regular soldiers were, for the most part, used to garrison forts in the exposed seigneuries and as a labor force, helping the habitants on the land. After the first disastrous Iroquois raids the French learned that it was no use looking for Iroquois war parties after an attack; they had to lie in wait for them along the routes they were likely to use. This proved more successful, and the Iroquois suffered heavy losses in sudden ambushes at a portage or river narrows. The French then began carrying the war to the enemy's country. In one swift raid several Mohawk villages were destroyed. Smaller parties of Canadians and allied Indians harried the Iroquois in their hunting and fishing grounds. Because of the ease with which the Iroquois learned of French military plans, which too often were discussed in Montreal's numerous taverns, the officers commanding these small parties were sent


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View of Quebec, 1699, from the cartouche on a map by J.-B.-L. Franquelin. (Public Archives of Canada)


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off without being told their objective. Instead, the officer in command was given sealed orders, to be opened some ten miles out of Montreal. With these changes in methods, the Iroquois losses began to mount. The number of warriors who failed to return from a raid or a hunting trip increased. When, on Frontenac's orders, Iroquois captives were burned slowly to death in the French settlements in the same manner that the Five Nations dealt with their prisoners, the Iroquois ceased to press their attacks as recklessly as before. Not only did the Iroquois have to use far more caution in approaching the French settlements, but they had to be on guard near their own villages. To add to their difficulties, they received very little support from their Anglo-American allies. The New York border settlements were suffering drastically from French raids, and many settlers fled to the less exposed provinces. The Iroquois, too engaged in the war to hunt, were bringing little fur to Albany; nor was it receiving supplies of contraband from Montreal as formerly. When Governor Benjamin Fletcher of New York appealed to the other colonies for aid, he received only regrets, and the Iroquois received the same reply from the Albany authorities when they complained that they were fighting alone. The French, on the other hand, were suffering no shortage of furs because of the war. Just the reverse in fact. Frontenac sent parties of some hundred and forty men to the western posts each year, ostensibly to convoy supplies to the garrisons and the Indian allies to aid them in prosecuting the war against the Iroquois. The intendant soon discovered that these military detachments were nothing more than trading ventures; the canoes were loaded not with military supplies but with trade goods, brandy being a major item. New posts were opened in the Sioux and Assiniboin countries; how many, and where, will probably never be known since Frontenac was careful to write as little as possible about these ventures in his dispatches to the minister. Suffice it to say that the war served as a marvelous means for a tremendous expansion of the western fur trade empire. There were now more French traders in the west than ever before. The capital for this expansion came from three sources: the king's stores in the guise of military supplies for the Indian allies; the Canadian merchants; and the marchands forrains, merchants of La Rochelle who came every summer with trade goods, hired coureurs de bois at Montreal to transport the goods to the west to trade, and returned to France in the autumn with the furs brought back by other coureurs de bois sent out the previous year. What proportion of the fur trade was in the hands of these nonresident capitalists is not known, but it appears to have been considerable. The amount of beaver coming into the offices of the Company of the Farm as a result of this expansion is a good indication of its extent. At a time when the demand in Europe was shrinking, as a result of a change in hat styles decreeing a narrower brim and the use of blended felts by hat makersbeaver fur mixed with rabbit or Peruvian Ilama woolthe amount


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shipped from Quebec rose to four times annually what the French market could absorb. Over 140,000 livres weight of beaver a year was flooding in, and the Company of the Farm, by 1695, had an unsaleable surplus of 3,500,000 livres worth in its warehouses. 29 The Canadian beaver trade was on the verge of bankruptcy. The political consequences of this unbridled fur trade expansion were even more menacing. The Ottawa, who had previously provided the bulk of the furs, found themselves being eliminated from their middleman role. The French traders, military and civilian alike, were voyaging far beyond Michilimackinac to trade directly with the Assiniboin, the Ottawa's main suppliers, and with the Sioux. As long as the Ottawa could remember, the Sioux had been their enemies. French firearms had enabled them to hold their own against the ancient foe, but now the French were supplying the Sioux with muskets. It was at this juncture of events that the Iroquois, who badly needed a respite from recent French attacks to recuperate their strength, made separate overtures for peace to both the French and the Ottawa in a cunning attempt to play the one off against the other. When Frontenac, despite the warnings of his subordinates, agreed to a truce while negotiations were under way, the Iroquois informed the Ottawa that the French were abandoning them. The Ottawa, already disgruntled by French policies, were quick to accept Iroquois proposals for peace and an alliance. The entire French position in the west now teetered in the balance. Nothing could have made it more obvious how tenuous this empire really was. Were the Ottawa to have defected and allied themselves with the Iroquois, the French would have been swept out of the west and the Five Nations would have been able to concentrate their entire strength against the central colony. This did not happen, but it came dangerously close. Frontenac's subordinates were able to bring enough pressure to bear to force him to undertake a full-scale invasion of the Iroquois cantons. In 1696 the villages of the Onondaga and Oneida were destroyed. They suffered only one casualty, but the loss of their food supplies was a hard blow. Disease and the steady toll of the petite guerre had reduced their strength to less than half what it had been when hostilities began.30 The Ottawa, who had refused to assist the French in the campaign, could not resist the temptation to harry their old foes brought low. The Five Nations appealed to the English for aid, received none, and were then forced to ask the French for terms, this time in earnest. Their attempt to wrest control of the western fur trade from the French had failed. Ironically, just as the French hold on the west was finally made secure, Louis XIV ordered that it be abandoned. He, and the minister of marine, had suddenly awakened to the fact that the glut of beaver had reached


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menacing proportions. The lease on the Canadian beaver monopoly expired in 1697, and there was a distinct danger that it would be impossible to find anyone to take it over. This would have entailed a sizable loss of revenue to the Crown. With France extremely hard pressed by the cost of the war in Europe and the disastrous winter of 1694, which had reduced the masses to starvation, this loss of revenue was too serious to contemplate. The minister, a kinsman of Frontenac's, had refused to accept the intendant's complaints that the governor's sending of military detachments to the west was largely responsible for the oversupply of fur. Now he was forced to face reality. Procrastination was replaced by drastic measures. When Frontenac returned from the Onondaga campaign, he received dispatches from the minister that spread consternation throughout the colony. All the posts in the west were to be destroyed and their garrisons recalled to the central colony, with the sole exception of Fort St. Louis des Illinois, which was to be retained only for military purposes and no trade in beaver was to be allowed at it. No more permits were to be issued for trade in the west; instead the western Indians were to bring their furs to Montreal to trade there. The Canadians were not to go beyond the settled areas along the St. Lawrence. This was a return to Colbert's old policy, but the circumstances were no longer what they had been in his day. For one thing, the war with the Iroquois and the English was not yet over. For another, the western allies had become accustomed during the past quarter century to having their needs supplied in their villages, and several of these tribes were not canoe men. To have withdrawn from the west in this fashion would have required them to reorganize their way of life drastically. It would also have left a power vacuum in the west, and there was no telling what forces would fill it. The royal edicts sparked a vigorous trans-Atlantic debate. Even the intendant Champigny, who had vigorously opposed Frontenac's use of military resources for trading purposes and whose warnings of the consequences the minister had refused to heed, declared that the new policy would be disastrous. Very quickly lines were drawn in the colony. The Jesuits strongly supported the restrictive measures, for they would be allowed to retain their missions and they were utterly convinced that the presence of French soldiers and traders among the Indians undermined all their efforts to Christianize them. Others, led by Frontenac and his associates, men to whom he had given commissions in the Troupes de la Marine and appointed commandants of the western posts, men like Tonti, LaForest, and Cadillac, who were interested only in private profit, bitterly opposed the edicts, claiming that they meant the destruction of New France. In between were men such as Champigny and Denis Riverin, the latter one of the colony's leading entrepreneurs, who advocated a middle way. Champigny proposed retaining the twenty-five annual congés, trading licenses, and three posts, Fort Frontenac, Michilimackinac, and St. Joseph


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des Miamis at the foot of Lake Michigan, along with adopting much tighter restrictions on the trade to prevent the old abuses. Denis Riverin, with remarkable prescience, proposed that the French retain their posts north of the Great Lakes and abandon those south of them. He pointed out that the bulk of the poor-grade beaver that had flooded the market came from the more southerly lands; hence this region was of no real value to France. Moreover, he stated, the Alleghenies were not an insuperable barrier to the Anglo-Americans. If France retained the region south of the Great Lakes, when the English began to penetrate the west, the French would be obliged to expend blood and treasure to keep them out of these lands that were really only an economic liability. The country north of the Great Lakes, on the other hand, produced better-quality furs, and he maintained that the French could easily hold this territory against English encroachment. 31 Riverin had no way of knowing it, but he was then advocating the very division of the continent that was to emerge, under different auspices, after the American Revolution. The minister, after perusing the spate of memoirs that flooded in protesting the new edicts, adopted a middle course, which did nothing to solve the basic problem; in fact, it only made it worse. He allowed the posts at Michilimackinac, St. Joseph des Miamis, St. Louis des Illinois, and also Fort Frontenac to be retained; no more trading licenses were to be issued; and the price of beaver was reduced. This meant that control of the entire western trade fell into the hands of the men whom Frontenac appointed to command at these posts. Some, if not most, of the other posts were clandestinely maintained, and the coureurs de bois, seeing Frontenac's men carrying on the trade as before, refused to obey the royal edict and return to the colony, except to slip in and out with their cargoes of furs and merchandise. After Frontenac's death in 1698 his successor, Hector de Callières, made a more determined attempt to stop the contraband trade, but with small success. By this time there were some two hundred coureurs de bois who knew no other way of life. Had it been possible to force them to return to the central colony, they could never have readjusted to that ordered society. They were prepared to defy the king's officers, even to turn renegade and trade out of Albany or Philadelphia, rather than abandon the west. One French officer, sent to Michilimackinac in 1702 to enforce the new regulation, reported back to the governor that the coureurs de bois there had merely laughed in his face. "It is very fine and Honourable for me, Monsieur" he wrote Callières, "to be charged with your orders but it is also very vexatious to have only ink and paper as means to enforce them."32 Callières did have much more success in another sphere. In 1697 hostilities in Europe had ceased, ended more by the exhaustion of the combatants than by anything else, and by the need to resolve the knotty problem of the succession to the throne of Spain. Peace with the Iroquois


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his organizing abilities. Duquesne had been convinced that it could not be done. At Fort Duquesne Contrecoeur had to rely on using his Canadians and Indians to harass the advancing foe, drive off their horses and cattle, and try to prevent them from reaching the fort by these guerrilla tactics. Yet he still forbade his scouting parties to cross the height of land, and he tried to prevent the Indians from attacking the English beyond it, but some of them refused to heed this order. 26 Once Braddock's army had crossed the line into what the French claimed to be their territory, it came under attack, but with little effect. When the British were only twenty miles from Fort Duquesne, the situation looked desperate, but the French were determined to make a stand. The Indian allies, not liking the odds, at first declined to join in an attack on the advancing army. Captain Daniel de Beaujeu, chosen to lead this seemingly forlorn hope, shamed them by marching out with 108 colonial regulars and 146 Canadian militia, declaring that whether they accompanied him or not he intended to attack the enemy. This appeal to their personal honor demanded that they show equal courage. Some 600 Indians, from the north, from the mission settlements of Canada, from the Ohio, rushed to join him. In the ensuing battle Braddock's army was shattered by the French and Indian force only half its size. British regulars and colonial militia proved no match for the Canadians and Indians in this type of warfare. Over two thirds of the British force were killed or wounded; the great train of baggage, supplies, and artillery, including 100 cattle and four to five hundred horses, was abandoned as the terrified survivors fled back over the mountainsthis at a cost to the French and their allies of twenty-three killed and twenty wounded. For days afterward the French gathered up the spoils of war, with the Indians taking the lion's share. To Contrecoeur's dismay, the Indians brought the captured horses and cattle to Fort Duquesne, where they promptly ate their way through the corn fields that had been counted on to feed the garrison during the coming winter. With the equipment abandoned by the British were Braddock's papers containing the British plans for the expeditions against not only Fort Duquesne, but also Forts Niagara, Beaubassin, and St. Frederic on Lake Champlain. This enabled the French to muster their forces in time to counter two of these threats. Command of the expedition against Niagara had been entrusted to William Shirley, governor of Massachusetts. Although a military amateur he was given the rank of major general, and on the death of Braddock he succeeded briefly as commander in chief in North America. After the usual intercolonial bickering and chicanery he managed to muster 2400 hastily raised, untrained, colonial regulars and militiamen for the assault on Niagara. By the time he reached Oswego the French had moved sizable reinforcements to Lake Ontario, and his own troops were reduced to 1400 by sickness and desertion. In mid-September it was decided to defer the


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assault until the following year. The colonial forces were then concentrated for an attack on Fort St. Frederic at the narrows of Lake Champlain. Again the French forestalled them by swiftly moving to Lake George a strong force led by Jean-Armand, baron de Dieskau, commander of the regular troops recently arrived in the colony. A confused day's fighting ensued, reflecting little credit on the military abilities of either side. The French withdrew, leaving their wounded and very disgruntled general a prisoner in enemy hands. Neither side could claim a victory. The Anglo-Americans had been stopped in their drive to Lake Champlain; the French had failed to destroy the enemy or capture Fort William Henry at the foot of Lake George. On the Acadian frontier the French were unable to avert defeat. For years the partisan leader Abbé Jean-Louis Le Loutre, missionary to the Micmac, had incited these warriors to give the British settlers in Nova Scotia no rest. He had also done everything in his not inconsiderable power to force the reluctant Acadians to quit British-held territory and relocate around the French forts at the head of the Bay of Fundy. His aim, and that of the officials at Quebec, was to use them in the struggle to regain the lost section of Acadia for France. These Acadians, simple peasant farmers and fishermen, wished only to be left alone, but preferably under the French flag. By the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht their land had been ceded to Britain and the British authorities had encouraged them to remain, but they had consistently refused to swear an unconditional oath of allegiance to the British crown because this would have required them to take up arms against the king's enemies, namely, the French. This they could not bring themselves to do. When Fort Beauséjour on the Acadian border fell to a large force of English colonial militia on June 16, 1755, some 300 Acadians were found in it under arms. They had, however, taken the precaution of obtaining from the French commandant a declaration that he had forced them to serve under pain of death. The terms of the capitulation included a clause that they would be pardoned, and they surrendered with that understanding; but the British officer commanding in Nova Scotia, Colonel Charles Lawrence, had previously decided to expel all the Acadians from the province. He made this decision for military reasons. Despite the absence of an official declaration of war, hostilities had begun and he had no desire to fight the French with some ten thousand Acadians in his midst who might very well support an invading French army. This decisionbut hardly the manner in which it was carried outmight be justified on the grounds of military expediency, but if so, the actions of Abbé Le Loutre and of the Acadians who resisted the British must also be condoned. Regardless of the way it was done and the moral and legal issues involved, the fact remains that the Anglo-American forces successfully removed the French and Acadian threat to the Nova Scotian frontier.


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The French, however, were able to salvage something out of the disaster. The fate of the Acadians was given great publicity in Canada. Although some of the Acadians escaped to French-held territory, they had lost everything. The less fortunate were driven from their homes, which were put to the torch. They were then herded onto ships, with members of families separated, children from parents, some never to be reunited, and dumped in various ports in the English colonies, in England, and some in France. The Canadians were quick to grasp the point; were they to be conquered, this was the fate they too could expect. Nothing could have been better contrived to make them fight with unbridled ferocity. With hostilities begun by the British, Pierre-François de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnial, successor as governor general to Duquesne, felt no compunction whatsoever in striking back with every means available to him. He was a Canadian by birth and training, being the son of an earlier governor of the colony. His strategy was to employ the troupes de terre sent from France to secure the approaches to the central colony, and then to use the colonial regulars, the Troupes de la Marine, the Canadian militia, and the Indian allies to ravage the AngloAmerican frontiers, and oblige the English colonials to use their vastly greater numbers to defend their frontier settlements. Initially, this strategy enjoyed success. Indian nations from the east, north, and west rushed to join in the assault. Along the whole length of the Alleghenies, from Carolina to New York and down the eastern slopes to within thirty miles of Philadelphia, the Anglo-American settlements went up in flames. Those who survived fled toward the seaboard and pleaded for protection. The situation eventually became so desperate word reached Quebec in October 1757 that the governor of Pennsylvania sought to treat with the Indians to grant them unopposed passage to attack Virginia, provided they spared the settlements of Pennsylvania en route. 27 Half a century earlier the Canadians had experienced the same sort of attacks in the Iroquois war and initially they had suffered heavy casualties, but they had mastered the art of guerrilla warfare and then beat back the Iroquois by using their own tactics of surprise, ambush, and swift assault where least expected. In that cruel war the Canadian military tradition was born. The Anglo-American frontiersmen proved quite incapable of coping with the assaults on their settlements. They could only plead for help, which the colonial authorities were unable to provide. Herein lay the difference between the rival colonies. The Canadian frontier experience garnered in the western fur trade was the best training imaginable for this type of warfare. The Anglo-American frontiersman, more familiar with the axe and the plow, than with the musket and canoe paddle, eager to convert virgin forest into cleared farm land, rejecting all authority that sought to curb his private interests for the common good, was no match for the Canadians and their allies.28 For the ensuing two years the Anglo-Americans suffered a series of crushing defeats. It was not Fort Niagara that was captured in 1756


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by the Anglo-Americans, but Fort Oswego by the French and Canadians, and this caused the Iroquois to incline, ominously, to the French. 29 The following year went even worse for the British. The French had built a massive fort at Ticonderoga. Although poorly sited, it served as a base for offensive operations. The English frontier settlements, and areas once well behind the frontier, were again ravaged with heavy loss of life. During the summer of 1757 a convoy reached Quebec with 3500 more regulars. In July, Louis-Joseph, marquis de Montcalm, who had succeeded Dieskau as commander of the French regulars, moved 5000 troops supported by a host of Indians to the foot of Lake George and laid siege to Fort William Henry. Although the British commander, General Daniel Webb, had 7000 troops at his disposal, he failed to concentrate them where they were needed and the fort surrendered after a few days of bombardment. Then occurred the infamous attack on the surrendered garrison by the French Indians, who saw no reason why they should abide by European rules of war in their own country. Perhaps not more than 200 of the more than 2000 men in the fort were killed or carried off, and once the massacre started Montcalm and his officers did all they could to end it; but it should never have happened. Montcalm, as commanding officer, has to be held responsible for not taking more effective measures to prevent it. The borders of the English colonies had been driven far back, south of Lake George and over the Alleghenies; Lake Ontario was now a French lake, and the French and their allies were carrying the war to the enemy along the entire length of the frontier. In New France there was jubilation and the sweet, heady smell of victory; in the English colonies, nothing but defeat, cries of woe and rage; fear that the situation could only get worse, and pleas for peace before it did. Even before word was received in France of the victory at Lake George, a friend of the Comte de Broglie wrote to him from Versailles: "The news that we receive from America by way of Holland and England is so advantageous for us that we still don't dare believe it. If it were really true the English would have no recourse but to make peace quickly in order to conserve part of their colonies."30 And in London Lord Chesterfield wrote: "This winter, I take for granted, must produce a peace, of some kind or another; a bad one for us, no doubt, and yet perhaps better than we shall get the year after."31 Everyone knows, of course, that the following year the tide turned, and eventually Canada was conquered. Given that fact, and the relative populations of the British and French coloniesroughly 1,500,000 and 70,000 respectivelyit is all too easy to assume that this outcome to the war was inevitable. If that were so, one can only wonder why the Canadians and the French regulars put up such a desperate fight. The truth is, they expected at least to hold their own until peace in Europe forced the British in America to desist; and given the military situation as it was in 1757, they had good cause to be sanguine. They had beaten the Anglo-Americans in almost every


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engagement, and were convinced of their own military superiority. The Royal Navy had not yet succeeded in preventing supplies and reinforcements from reaching the colony from France, and the tremendous advantage in manpower enjoyed by the Anglo-Americans was more apparent than real. Lacking the large numbers of guerrilla fighters that the French had at their disposal, they had to remain on the defensive. A handful of Indians led by Canadian officers appearing near the settlements created panic and tied down large defensive forces; and fear of a slave insurrection in the southern colonies made the authorities there fearful of removing many of their men far from their own frontiers. The French also enjoyed the advantage of both interior and exterior lines of communication. Externally, their river routes to the Ohio allowed them to keep their distant bases supplied and to ravage the English colonial frontier, then quickly retire. Within the central colony of New France they had the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu-Lake Champlain routes along which to move large forces swiftly. The enemy could only approach by ship up the St. Lawrence to Quebec; by small boat down Lake Champlain and the Richelieu, where the chain of French forts could delay them; and by way of Lake Ontario then down the St. Lawrence to attack Montreal, but this route was so hampered by rapids that a relatively small force could have inflicted heavy casualties by guerrilla tactics. Even were three armies to move along these three routes against New France, they would have been completely out of touch with one another and operating along difficult and lengthening supply lines. The chance of their all arriving on the doorstep of the colony at the same time was remote. Most important of all, the problem of communications and supply limited the number of men the British could employ in the campaigns; if the British had had even a far greater advantage in numbers, it is unlikely that they could have put larger forces in the field. If the conquest of New France was inevitable owing to the inferiority of numbers, the conquest of England's ally, Prussia, in this same war was also inevitable. The gravest weakness of the French forces was their divided command. Montcalm, hot-tempered, supercilious, continually fuming over petty slights, real or imagined, commanded the French regulars and had tactical direction of the forces in the field. Vaudreuil, resentful, vain, unsure of himself, as governor general had overall command and dictated strategy. These two men, the one French and the other Canadian, and very conscious of it, quickly came to detest each other. Before long they were devoting more of their energies to feuding than to the direction of the war. This animosity spread to some of the subordinate French officers, who found campaigning in North America not to their taste, and Montcalm made no attempt to curb it; just the reverse in fact. Vaudreuil wanted to wage offensive war, employing Canadian and Indian war parties to ravage the English colonies, forcing them to keep their troops in defensive positions so


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that they would be unable to strike at Canada. Montcalm, his military experience gained on European battlefields, had little but contempt for this type of warfare and the men who waged it. He wanted to fight set-piece battles, where superior tactics, fire power, and discipline brought victory. In 1758, upon appealing to the Court, Montcalm won his battle with the governor general. Promoted to lieutenant general, he was given supreme authority over all the military forces, and Vaudreuil was ordered to defer to him in all military affairs. Unfortunately for the French cause, Montcalm was a confirmed defeatist. He regarded the colony as already lost. 32 Lower down the military ladder there was ill-feeling between the officers of the colonial regulars, the Troupes de la Marine, and the officers of the French regular army, the regiments of the Troupes de Terre. The latter bitterly resented that many of the Canadian officers were appointed to command at the western posts, where they made fortunes in the fur trade, and that others were making even greater fortunes in the supply services with the connivance of the intendant François Bigot, while they themselves could not live on their meager incomes owing to inflation. They were particularly disgruntled at receiving their pay and allowances in wartime paper scrip issued by Bigot at a sizable discount. In the lower echelons, the French regular soldiers and the Canadians did not get along well together. During the winter months the bulk of the regulars were billeted on the Canadians, and this caused a great deal of trouble. With Montcalm's permission some few of the soldiers married Canadian girls and obtained grants of land; others planned to do so. They were assured that when the war ended they could obtain their discharge and remain in the colony. Montcalm commented, significantly: ''We cannot leave here too many soldiers from our battalions; were we to take them back they would be no good for service in Europe but they will prove good for America."33 In 1757 an epidemic, brought by the troop ships bringing reinforcements, was accompanied by a crop failure. This last was particularly disastrous at a time when the colony had an additional 9000 mouths to feed: troops, refugee Acadians, and western Indians who had come down to fight on the Lake Champlain front. The hospitals at Montreal and Quebec held 500 men, three or four dying every day. Between May and October, 250 of the Troupes de Terre alone succumbed, reducing their strength to 3730. As though that were not bad enough, the reinforcements who had introduced the disease into the colony were raw recruits of the worst quality, the dregs of the army. Nearly twenty were court-martialed and a prodigious number punished by their regimental officers, but the rot spread throughout the battalions, ruining discipline.34 Nor was morale improved by a forced reduction of the food rations from two livres of bread per day to less than a quarter of a livre. The housewives of Montreal vigorously protested having to accept horse meat, and a nun at Quebec wrote in her order's journal: "Three scourges stalk our land: plague, famine, and war. Of the three famine is the most terrible."


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Too much should not be made of this situation. The worst of the shortage occurred after the harvest, at a time when military operations were curbed by the onset of winter. Soldiers and civilians alike had to tighten their belts and subsist on unpalatable foods, but they survived. A great dealindeed too muchhas been made of the alleged practices of the intendant Bigot and his clique, who amassed huge fortunes from their monopoly on colonial supplies; while the mass of the population were reduced to a bare subsistence level, they entertained like oriental potentates. Balls and banquets with groaning tables, lavish dinner parties, gambling for fantastic stakesthese were the amusements in Bigot's circle during the winter months. In one night at cards he was reputed to have lost 200,000 livres, and this at a time when junior officers were running into debt just to live. 35 Yet the fact remains that French military operations do not appear to have been seriously hampered by these activities. Montcalm professed disgust at what was going on but he rarely declined an invitation; and the supplies he needed for campaigns, Bigot provided, albeit at greatly inflated cost to the crown. The intendant may have been a scoundrel; he was also a very efficient administrator. Indeed, the British generals, striving desperately to cope with supply problems made worse by petty corruption, short-sighted selfishness, and incompetence, would probably have been glad to have had a Bigot take charge for them. It was not until after the war that the aftermath of Bigot's system brought terrible hardship to the colony, when the huge sums of paper money he had issued were repudiated. The fall of New France cannot be blamed on him. In Britain, meanwhile, William Pitt had acceded to power. While others contemplated treating for peace, he concentrated on winning the war. Realizing that the war in America could not be won, and might well be lost, if reliance continued to be placed on the colonists to carry the war to the enemy, he shipped several thousand British regulars to the colonies for campaigns against Louisbourg, Ticonderoga, and Fort Duquesne. New general officers were appointed, and Pitt assured the colonial legislatures that the British taxpayers would reimburse them for the cost of raising and maintaining the 25,000 men they were called on to provide for their own defense. This put a new complexion on things, and the colonial assemblies at last began to cooperate in the war effort. To command the assault on Louisbourg, Pitt chose Colonel Jeffery Amherst, whose chief characteristic proved to be plodding thoroughness. By May 28 the British fleet, with 8000 troops, was off Louisbourg. This great fortress, claimed by some to bar the St. Lawrence entrance to Canada, could in fact bar nothing beyond the range of its cannon. Intended as a base to maintain a fleet to guard French interests in North America, it was not Louisbourg itself but the fleet it could harbor that was the danger, but in 1758 there was no fleet; the Royal Navy had seen to that off Cartagena and La Rochelle. There was really no need for an assault on Louisbourg; it could


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have been left to wither on the vine. Amherst's siege lasted until July 26. One of his brigadiers, James Wolfe, caustically remarked: "If it had been attacked by anybody but the English, it would have fallen long ago." Louisbourg had at least held out long enough to prevent the intended expedition against Quebec from being launched that year, and on the Lake Champlain frontier the British plans had again come unstuck. There, Major General James Abercromby was directed to march on the French forts with an army of 27,000 men, 20,000 of them provincials. Although only 9024 colonial levies were provided, and they were mostly raw recruits, Abercromby still had over 15,000 men, opposed to Montcalm's 3500. Without bothering to study the terrain, Abercromby launched his regular troops against the French entrenchments at Ticonderoga, where they were slaughtered by intense musketry fire. Assault after assault failed to reach the French lines. The intervening ground became carpeted with red-coated bodies. Eventually even these highly disciplined troops could take no more. Abercromby's demoralized army retired in confusion. The British regulars had suffered nearly 1600 casualties, the provincials 334. The French had 106 killed and 266 wounded. 36 In the west things were different. In August, Lieutenant Colonel Bradstreet, with some 2600 provincial troops and 157 regulars, caught the French at Fort Frontenac completely by surprise. The garrison, numbering just over a hundred men, was able to resist only long enough to surrender with honor. Bradstreet made no attempt to occupy and hold the fort, and with good reason. Had he done so, a relief expedition from Montreal would have forced him to surrender in turn. As a fortress, Fort Frontenac was of little value, but the destruction of the supplies intended for the Ohio posts, and the boats in which to transship them, was a serious blow to the French position in the southwest. This was made plain when General John Forbes and Colonel Henry Bouquet invaded the Ohio country with nearly 7000 men. They had made a close study of French methods of waging war in the interior, particularly of their practice of establishing a chain of bases and supply entrepôts along their lines of communication. Slowly, and painstakingly, they thrust their way forward over the mountains. Their main difficulty was obtaining wagons and teamsters from the colonials, who demanded military protection but refused to aid those affording it. An advance scouting party over 800 strong approaching Fort Duquesne was badly mauled by the garrison and attendant Indians, losing nearly 300 men. The French suffered only sixteen casualties. It appeared to be another Braddock defeat on a smaller scale, and the French remained convinced that they were still masters of the situation. In October the French launched a spoiling attack on the advanced British post at Loyalhanna. It did not enjoy the same success as previous assaults, and the Ohio Indians suffered quite heavy losses. These tribes


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needed a respite and were now willing to listen to peace overtures from the Pennsylvania authorities. After lengthy negotiations they allowed themselves to be persuaded that the Anglo-Americans were sincere in their declarations that they did not covet the Indians' lands. At a conference held at Easton, Pennsylvania, in October 1758, delegates of the Ohio Iroquois and nine other nations made their peace with the English. The Pennsylvania authorities solemnly renounced all claim to lands beyond the mountains. The Indians mistakenly assumed that the pledge was binding on all the Anglo-Americans and would be honored. This defection, combined with a shortage of supplies, forced the French to destroy Fort Duquesne in November and withdraw to Fort Machault. They thereby preserved the French presence on the Ohio. The British, however, made no attempt to follow up their success; instead they devoted their energies to consolidating their extended supply lines and to the construction of a stockade and winter quarters at Fort Pitt. This disturbed the Indians. It appeared that the French had been displaced only to be replaced by an even more menacing British presence on their lands. Lieutenant François de Ligneris at Fort Machault was able to win back the support of some of the wavering tribesmen. When fresh supplies and troop reinforcements reached him from Montreal, he made preparations to regain dominion over the Ohio. The defeats in the west, first Fort Frontenac, then Duquesne, came as a severe shock to Montcalm and Vaudreuil. Montcalm had dismissed the reports of Forbes' advance as a British ruse to dupe him into moving part of his army from the Lake Champlain front to the west. 37 Despite his victory at Ticonderoga, he became more defeatist than ever. He had earlier advised that the forts in the Ohio Valley be abandoned on the grounds that they were too great a drain on the colony's supplies and manpower, and served no vital military purpose. He easily convinced himself that Canada was lost unless peace were made before the next year's campaigns began,38 but the situation did not warrant such pessimism. The loss of Louisbourg and Fort Duquesne and the destruction of Fort Frontenac had not affected the ability of the central colony to defend itself. Communications with the western fur trade posts were still open and the furs were still coming down to Montreal. In fact, in 1758 at least 220 men, and probably many more, left Montreal for the western trading posts.39 Obviously not everyone in the colony regarded the situation as hopeless. With their interior lines of communication and short supply lines, the Canadians were still in a fairly strong position. The events of the following year were to make this plain. Pitt's plans for the campaign of 1759 called for New France to be attacked by three armies along the river lines: a sea-borne assault up the St. Lawrence to attack Quebec, an army to advance up Lake Champlain to attack the center of the colony by way of the Richelieu, and a force to proceed from Lake Ontario down the St. Lawrence to attack Montreal. The


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French abandoned their forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and then retired to Fort Île aux Noix at the outlet of Lake Champlain. Amherst, moving with the speed of a glacier, advanced only as far as Crown Point. The massive fort he then proceeded to construct there indicates clearly that he entertained little hope that Canada would be conquered. Similarly, the advance of the western army got no farther than Lake Ontario. The naval force, transporting an army under Major General James Wolfe, reached Quebec unopposed before the end of June. Montcalm and Vaudreuil sat back behind their lines at Quebec and allowed Wolfe's army not only to establish itself on the Île d'Orléans, but also to seize the point of land on the south shore of the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec. Once the British were securely established there, they mounted batteries of heavy cannon and during the ensuing weeks pounded the buildings and homes of Quebec to rubble. Worse still, under cover of this fire Admiral Sir Charles Saunders was able to get his ships up the river beyond Quebec. This meant that the army could land either above or below Quebec for an assault on the walled town. Wolfe failed to take advantage of the mobility the fleet afforded him. Instead, he spent the summer striving without success to break the French lines below Quebec. In frustration, he turned his American Rangers loose to ravage the countryside. This calculated policy of terror would, he hoped, bring Montcalm's army out of its entrenched position to give battle. He was convinced that the superiority of his regiments made victory in such an engagement certain, but Montcalm refused to abandon his position. All he had to do was hold on, and beat back the enemy attacks. At summer's end the British would be forced to withdraw down river. The Rangers, aided by detachments of regulars, set about their grim work with enthusiasm. Four thousand wellbuilt stone homes and manor houses went up in flames all along the river. In late August Jeremiah Pearson, soldier in the Massachusetts forces, wrote in his diary: "the Raingers and the lite Invitery embarked aboard the flatbotum Boats and went down the river about 30 miles and Lay in the Brig that night. Ye 23 we went on Shore for to set the houses on fire we had an ingagement with the french and kild and Sculped 16 of them and came all the way up by Land and got Sheep and geese and hens a nuf of them and set all the houses on fire as we came." 40 Every male Canadian over fifteen was a member of the militia and under orders to oppose the enemy by every means. Wolfe, however, took the European view that they were civilians and if caught in active opposition subject to punishment under military law. The Canadians had to suffer what the Anglo-American frontier settler had had to endure, but they fought back savagely in defense of their homes, despite heavy losses. In the west the British had more success. By the end of June 1759, Brigadier-General John Prideaux had reoccupied Fort Oswego. Leaving a strong garrison he proceeded to attack Fort Niagara with 2000 regulars and,


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what was most ominous for the French, 1000 Iroquois. Captain Pierre Pouchot, commandant at Niagara, had only 486 French troops and Canadian militia, and a small force of allied Indians. He managed to persuade the Iroquois to sit on the side lines and let the Europeans fight it out. He also got word to Fort Machault of his plight, and the commandant, Lieutenant François de Ligneris, rushed to his aid with 600 French and a thousand western Indians. Their route was blocked by a British force of 500 regulars, 100 provincial troops, and 600 Iroquois. The French advanced on the British position, within sight of Fort Niagara, full of confidence. But the British troops had learned much since the days of Braddock. Under Colonel Henry Bouquet they had received intensive training in light infantry tactics in wooded country, and in marksmanship. This time the French came under withering and sustained fire that broke their attempts to flow around the British position. When they wavered, the British charged. The French turned and fled. At this the Iroquois, who had not taken part, joined in the pursuit. Their blood lust roused, the British had a hard time restraining them from butchering the French who had surrendered. This defeat of the relief force gave Pouchot no alternative but to surrender Fort Niagara. On July 24, after three weeks of bombardment he capitulated. With the loss of Niagara, the French hold on Lakes Ontario and Erie, and the Ohio country, was finally wrested away. Yet the French still held the regions north of the lakes, and French canoes still went out of Montreal to the western posts. The military frontier in the southwest had collapsed, but to the north the fur trade frontier remained. At Quebec, Wolfe had been frustrated at every turn. With little time left before being forced to raise the siege, he finally accepted his brigadiers' proposal to effect a landing above the town. This, the brigadiers insisted, would force Montcalm to give battle since he had to keep his supply route from Montreal open; he maintained food supplies in Quebec sufficient only for a few days. Wolfe made one drastic change in the brigadiers' plan. Instead of forcing a landing a few miles above Quebec astride the Montreal road, he chose Anse au Foulon at the foot of a steep 175-foot cliff, less than two miles from the town walls. It was a last desperate gamble before being forced to admit defeat and return to England with the remnants of the army. Montcalm, right up until the landing, was convinced that Wolfe would attack on the other side of the city or on the center. The British achieved complete surprise and on the morning of September 13, before Montcalm knew it, they had some 4500 men on the Plains of Abraham. Without waiting for Colonel Louis-Antoine de Bougainville to come up with the 3000 regulars stationed at Cap Rouge less than ten miles upstream, Montcalm gathered his forces from the opposite flank and rushed into battle with 4500 men, less than half the force he had available. His troops lacked the training


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and discipline possessed by the British regulars. He had mustered Canadians, untrained for European style fighting in line, even British deserters, into his regular regiments to bolster their diminishing numbers. 41 They fired too soon, broke ranks to reload, lost the shock effect of volleys fired at effective range. The British lines held their fire until the enemy was within sixty yardssome accounts say forty. Then came the crashing volleys by platoons, all down the line. The French lines were shattered. Those left standing broke and ran, the British in hot pursuit. The battle was won in a matter of minutes. Most of the 658 casualties suffered by the British were inflicted before, and after, the main engagement by Canadian skirmishers fighting the only way they knew, from cover. The French reckoned their casualties at 44 officers and about 600 men. Among the fatal casualties were both Montcalm and Wolfe. The fact that both generals were killed is evidence enough that the tactics employed were rather dubious. The British had won the battle but the French still held Quebec, and Vaudreuil was able to get the bulk of the French forces around and past the British armysomething he would not have been able to do had Wolfe landed where his brigadiers had suggestedto join up with Bougainville's forces. The Chevalier de Ramezay was left in Quebec with a token force and orders to hold until his food supplies were exhausted. By September 17 the Chevalier de Lévis, who had succeeded to command of the French forces, had rallied the army and was marching back to relieve the garrison. Before he arrived, de Ramezay had capitulated and the British occupied the shattered city. The loss of Quebec was a harsh blow to the French. Yet the British held only the city and its outskirts; the French, the rest. After the British fleet had sailed, Lévis got ships away to France, to plead for reinforcements to be sent early the next year. Everything depended on which fleet would arrive first. In April, before the ice was out of the river, Lévis marched his forces to Quebec, and General James Murray, who had succeeded to command, obliged him by giving battle outside the town. This time the decision was reversed. The British forces were sent reeling back into Quebec from the battlefield at Ste. Foy. Lévis then invested the town, waiting for the hoped-for reinforcements to arrive. On May 9 the first ship came up the rivera British frigate with word that more were on their way. On May 16 Lévis had to abandon the siege and retire to Montreal. Three armies now converged on the dwindling French forces. Murray's strengthened army moved up from Quebec; Brigadier William Haviland forced his way up the Richelieu; and Jeffery Amherst finally put in an appearance with an army brought down the St. Lawrence from the reconstructed Oswego. Lévis still wanted to give battle, not because he had any hope of defeating the British and saving the colony, but because he could not bring himself to surrender without a fight. He was an ambitious man. New France might be finished, but his career was not. Many of the


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